Frequently Asked Questions
Why are so few of your writers women?
This one was a real puzzle. Trying to answer it took us to all sorts of places.
Certainly there is no discrimination. Maybe women are too sensible to write guides! After all, writing a guidebook is a bit like having children – exciting at conception, a long gestation, painful when it comes out, never leaves home, etc etc. Maybe it’s the best way for men to experience this wonderful process.
So then we started to do some calculations. Of our current range 15% are written by women and a further 10% are written by men and women (usually husband and wife or partners). Of guides published in the last 4 years, 35% are totally or partly written by women.
Then we started to look at other guidebook publishers and quickly concluded that these results, whilst not half and half, are far better than other publishers achieve. We suspect we actually do quite well.
Should we be looking for more women guidebook writers? Yes, of course we should. But we should always be looking for the best writers, whether men or women.
Do women write guides that are different from those written by men? Do they see and emphasise different things? We would love your feedback on this, but thinking through the skills and results from our authors, both men and women, we don’t really see a difference.
So many thanks to all our talented women writers:
Gillian Price
Janette Norton
Hilary Sharp
Alison Raju
Aileen Evans
Jan Kelsall
Julie Royal
Jane Meadowcroft
Jacky Oglesby
Julie Statham
Janna Fleming
Jennifer Richards
Renata Narovzna
Beata Dhosa
Elaine Burkinshaw
Elizabeth Smith
Justi Carey
Fleur Speakman
Anne Nuttall
Mary Welsh
And to some who have died:
Connie Roos, struck by lightening exploring Corsica
June Parker, who defined Mallorca as one of the world’s great walking destinations
Gladys Sellers, intrepid explorer of northern England’s moors.
And just as importantly, our thanks to all the women who have stood behind their men as they have written their guides.
