appropriate, if somewhat tongue in cheek! By the way, women call other women "cows"; I don't think I have ever heard a man use the term outside an English TV drama. Emily : 24 Apr 2011 10:22:45am Doug Quixote: Precisely. It is a man's world still. Sure, Germaine et al did not have anything to do with the vote for women in Australia (a bit of compressed writing there, though it helps if you could be less concrete). The suffragettes did. And Virginia, Simone and Germaine have continued to keep our baby blues open wide. Dale Anderson : 20 Apr 2011 4:26:18pm Hi Alison, you automatically dismiss the possibility that men may naturally have a greater presence in the numbers of elite writers. Why? There are many occupations where one gender is shown to be superior to the other. I would of liked to hear of research actually indicating that the subconscious bias you describe actually exists. It wouldn't be hard to measure this subconscious effect if it exist. Give the works to a sample of judges who don't know the gender of the authors and see if there is a significant difference between the sample and the results of the various awarded prizes. In some aptitude tests of different skills it has been found that men and women have around the same level of skill but the variance in skills is greater in men resulting in men having greater numbers within the highly skilled groups and greater numbers in