Following on from that list of science fiction by female authors I’ve read in the last ten years, here’s the same for fantasy:
- The Interior Life — Katherine Blake
- Tam Lin — Pamela Dean
- The Paladin — C. J. Cherryh
- God Stalk — P. C. Hodgell
- Dark of the Moon — P. C. Hodgell
- A Wizard of Earthsea — Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Tombs of Atuan — Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Farthest Shore — Ursula K. Le Guin
- Shadow Magic — Patricia C. Wrede
- Daughter of Witches — Patricia C. Wrede
- The Harp of Imach Thyssel — Patricia C. Wrede
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone — J. K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — J. K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — J. K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — J. K. Rowling
- Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell — Susanna Clarke
- Deep Secret — Diane Wynne Jones
- A College of Magics — Caroline Stevermer
- The Prize in the Game — Jo Walton
- Gate of Ivrel — C. J. Cherryh
- The Year of Our War — Steph Swainson
- War for the Oaks — Emma Bull
- Grunts — Mary Gentle
And per comparison, the complete list: 231 books read of which 24 were written by women. Not a great score either, if percentage wise slightly better than in science fiction. (Compare also with detectives: 34 out of 87 books read.) For me personally at least it’s untrue that women are more represented in fantasy than in science fiction; this may be true, but I’m still reading more male than female authors. there really isn’t something about a specific genre that makes male authors more appealing than female ones or vice versa.
My naive assumption is that in an ideal world, the gender balance between authors in any given subgenre will be roughly equal. The idea that innate gender differences are to blame for the relative lack of female space opera/hard sf authors or the same lack of male dark fantasy vampire shaggers, as suggested several times in the original Torque Control discussion is just wrong. That we can even have this discussion some thirty years after the second wave of feminism hit science fiction is awful, but somehow we’re still in a situation that female sf/fantasy writers are more easily ignored by publishers, reviewers and readers, including myself. I’m not interested in debating why this is (at least not here and now), but this is not a situation that’s healthy for sf/fantasy to ignore.
(More on women and science fiction at Torque control.)