Like many others, I have signed up to receive news releases from the Copyright Office. Some are more interesting than others, and this one really caught my eye. I have bolded the text which stands out to me, which notes a lack of gender parity in those who seek to register works with the Copyright Office.
The full report is worth perusing for a number of reasons including understanding how the researchers determined the gender of copyright registrants. Their method is not full-proof, but errors would not account for the differences between the genders.
June 9, 2022
Today, the U.S. Copyright Office is releasing a report, Women in the Copyright System: An Analysis of Women Authors in Copyright Registrations from 1978 to 2020. The report draws on work by Professor Joel Waldfogel, the Copyright
Office’s 2021 Kaminstein Scholar in Residence. Professor Waldfogel
recently completed a new assessment of women’s authorship in copyright
registrations between 1978 and 2020, as well as women’s role in relevant
copyright-based creative industries.
The report reveals that the share of registrations listing women authors
has risen over time, with women representing 27.9 percent of authors of
works registered in 1978 and 38.5 percent of authors of works registered
in 2020. Their level of representation has increased across the board,
but with significant variations among different categories of works,
ranging in most cases from 20.4 percent to near parity. It is notable,
however, that in nearly every category, women make up a smaller share of
copyright registrants than they do of the participants in corresponding
occupations.
“The
Office is pleased to share this analysis of forty-two years of data on
women authors and copyright registration, as well as the reference data
set,” said Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter. “The trends revealed
are encouraging, with women making considerable progress in utilizing
the copyright system. At the same time, there is work to be done in
reaching gender parity in most areas. As part of the Office’s commitment
to ‘copyright for all,’ we look forward to continuing to collaborate
with colleagues and stakeholders to develop programs responsive to this
research, and further empower women to benefit from their creativity.”
In connection with the release of the Women in the Copyright Systems report,
the Office is providing a reference data set in XML format. The data
set contains information from roughly 20 million copyright registration
records from January 1, 1978, to July 8, 2021.
More information about the report and data set can be found here.