Who's a better writer, men or women?

[Van112]

I don't think the ability to write good books that can take one's breath away depends on the gender. I don't think it has anything to do with it at all. I believe we all have the capability to write despite our gender differences. What matters more is our objective in writing.

[AdlerOlivia11]

First and foremost, I certainly do not think that either men or women are objectively better writers as a whole. That's an enormous blanket statement! It also appears to be conflating sex with gender, and seems to presume a heteronormative reality-- can we even ask a question like that without specifying if we are talking about people who identify as "male" or "female", or people who are born with those sexes, or both? What about LGBTQ writers?

Even if we restricted the conversation to specifically heterosexual, cis gendered men and women, it's a fraught question. Primarily, it comes down to the individual. The stereotypes of women writing feelings better and men writing action or situations better do not hold water-- some male authors are extremely sensitive and great at writing emotion and some women could write a swashbuckling tale of bullfighting just as well as Hemingway. That said, I believe there are real differences in the psychosexual experience of men and women, to say nothing of social, political, and economic realities that can result in truly different understandings of the world. Because of this, I think male authors and female authors often do strike somewhat different tones, or at least, seem attuned to different themes.

I would be very curious to see which of the two writes more characters of the opposite gender. My totally unresearched feeling is that perhaps male authors write more main female characters than female authors write main male characters, but that may just be because we are more flooded with books written by men (women and minority groups having been somewhat shut out of the literary scene more frequently than men) so I may simply have an exposure bias to books by men.

[nikkyteewhy]

I don't believe male authors are better than female authors or female authors are better than male authors. I don't believe the quality of a book, depends on the sex but the imagination of the writer. The quality of a book depends on the author knowing his or her talents and developing it.

[JuliaKay]

I think both sexes are great at different styles of writing. Usually romance, ghost stories, and historical fiction, I prefer women. I think for men it depends mostly on the amount of talent rather than the genre.

[afwright]

Thats a hard one. My personal favourite author is a woman, however I very much enjoy a lot of male works. I don't think a sex wins this.

[palilogy]

I don't believe in one better then the other.
Even in poetry I have read amazing writing by both women and men.

[gkgurley]

Each individual person is so different that you can't compare writing with gender. I will say though that it seems like many male authors don't write female characters dimensionally enough, but that doesn't have to do with "men" being "lesser writers".

[Bukari]

Well, interesting! I think this topic is a very controversial topic we have to deliberate on. Before I begin, there is a popular saying that "what men can do women can even do better." So, as for me, it is just a popular saying to encourage women to also venture into new things, but there are many things or areas women can't venture or compete with the other sex.

[Kirbylini]

For the most part I like male writers better. Sarah J. Maas and Robin Hobb and the only female writers I've liked. The rest focus too much on romance. Maas definitely focuses on romance too, but her writing makes me devour every sentence as quick as possible so I don't notice it as much.

[Rob Graden]

Psychological research says that, in general, women are better with language than men. This finding would predict that women are better writers, or maybe more natural at it. On the other hand, the attempt to stereotype is indeed sexist. Dunno; is Katherine Mansfield a better writer than D.H. Lawrence? Both had the same passionate concerns, both wrote beautifully, and both battled with TB.

[KatSims92]

Whew, this will get controversial, and it's interesting reading other people's responses. Something I love about YA is that it's pretty much dominated by women and female writers/authors have had a harder time getting ahead in their careers due to misogyny. That being said, I prefer writers who are women.

[Mallory Porshnev]

I really don't know how to answer this question. I think it depends even on the country of origin of the author, their experience with writing, and so many other factors. I think there are more published male authors out there. So, it's probably natural that more of the good authors I can think of happen to be men.

[Nikolas Farmakis]

I do not think that gender influences writing ability, but I have observed that women have more imagination.

[nfdoughe]

I don't believe you can say either gender is completely better at one thing than the other. I think it comes down to what society finds acceptable for each, and then that field will be dominated by that gender. As individuals I think we all have our own skills and weaknesses. There are certainly successful women and men in various fields, but there are also unsuccessful ones.

[slj3988]

No preferance. As long as the story is well told and characters are well thought out, it makes no difference. I have noticed it's mostly women that write erotica though