«Male» and «female» prose in the repertorie of Ukrainian publishing houses: a gender factor (on the example of publishing houses «Klub Simeinoho Dozvilla», «Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva», «Folio», «Nash Format», «Vivat»)

The article deals with the influence of the gender factor on the publishing business. An illustration of this influence is the quantitative proportionality of the prose of male and female authorship in the repertoires of the five leading Ukrainian publishing houses.

Monitoring of specific tendencies, potential bias, inclinations, especially in the publishing of fiction books of male and female authorship can actively contribute to identify distinctive features and characteristics of the social and cultural space in which today there is an active realization of fiction books. With the help of this identification, it becomes possible to find and define specifics of the publishing policy of domestic publishing houses, as well as the features of public inquiries for products of the modern book industry.

As a result of the monitoring, the correlation between the fiction book production of male and female authors has been clarified, in which the first category of writers is quantitatively somewhat predominant (and in some cases significantly exceeds the number by two and even more times).

The partial argument of disproportionality is the identification of the publishers by gender, which may consciously or unknowingly be reflected in gender policy. Monitoring has also revealed this tendency. Publishing houses, in which men hold the post of general director, the editor in chief, show a higher gender gap than publishing houses, in which these positions are occupied by women. Among other causes of the phenomenon we have also allocated the factors such as publishing policy and readership demand.

In order to identify other causes, it is planned to continue the research in the de­veloped direction, which will be covered in the following exploration.

Keywords: publishing activity, male prose, female prose, gender factor.