This 1972 panel discussion features Nora Ephron, novelist Elizabeth Janeway and poet Carolyn Kizer, with literary critic Helen Vendler as moderator. The discussion was titled: “Women Writers: Has Anything Changed?”
“…still not nearly enough,” remarked Katie J.M. Baker, reporting on the recording for Jezebel.
Ms. Ephron began the panel discussion by talking about numbers she ran on book reviews in The New York Times between 1971 and 1972.
“There was 697 major reviews,” she noted. “And of that, 101 of those reviewed books by women. So that’s 14.5 percent.”
Explaining the same examination undertaken with the 1956 Book Review, she continued, “I went through 26 issues of it. Of 725 books that were reviewed, 107 were by women, which is 14.4 percent. So has anything changed? 0.1 percent, I don’t know.”