But why has the book market seen so much more progress than other industries?
The answer matters not just for women, but for society at large. With women continuing to represent less than 15 percent of inventors in the US, to give one glaring example, Waldfogel worries that there are likely a whole bunch of"Lost Marie Curies" out there who could be helping us find cures for diseases or creating innovative, new technologies. But something seems to be holding them back.
Waldfogel says his best guess for why women have seen so much progress in book publishing in the US, as opposed to other creative domains, has to do with the reality that the process of book-writing is typically a solo endeavor, in which the author has more power to choose when and how to do the work.