"If a woman writes about a family, it's just assumed that she's writing about herself."

Writer Jennifer Weiner did a great interview with NPR on the double standards within fiction writing, and how female authors are often relegated to the "chick lit," while men are lauded (even when they're writing essentially the same things). She also talks about the lack of parity in genre writing, a much-maligned ghetto of the lit world, but even there genres dominated by men are given preferential treatment:

"I'd love it, sure, if The [New York] Times sort of treated my books with respect," she says. "I think The Times should make space for commercial women's fiction the same way they make space for commercial men's fiction." Weiner points out that while The Times runs roundups of crime novels, it completely overlooks romance. And, she says, even women considered to be literary fiction authors have a hard time getting recognized.

A while ago on a blog, I tried to make the same argument comparing Weiner to alt-lit wonderboy, Nick Hornby. They both write about home, family, and friends, and often draw from their own experiences, but Horny maintains his indie cool status while Weiner's work is thought of as more disposable (hey, kind of like pop music). It seems like such an obvious bias that it shouldn't need 1000-word screeds written about it, but the answer I got was, "No, Hornby's just better." Like quantifiably better or given a measurable amount of respect?