Men vs. women reading novels

[MsAmerica]

I just ran across this, and although the statistics are for America, I suspect that it's more broadly applicable.

A 2022 study conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts indicated a large gender gap when it comes to reading fiction, finding that 46.9 percent of women read fiction, compared to 27.7 percent of men.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/books/could-a-river-runs-through-it-have-been-a-hit-today.html

Three questions occur to me:

1.Do men avoid novels because they feel reading should be utilitarian?

2.Do men avoid novels because they have no interest in solitary exclusively mental amusement, and prefer their amusements to involve physicality, like sports?

3.Do men avoid novels because they have little capacity for, or interest in, other people and their concerns, as in novel characterizations? And does this connect in some way to men's willingness to be violent or go to war, that they may have difficult in seeing others are comparably fully human?

I hope some of you enjoy batting this around!

My dad only read non fiction when I was growing up (he was the main reader in our house). I followed in his footsteps till last year when I read DHs fave book (been married almost ten years, but had three kids pretty quickly so I’ve only just got round to it). It was the first non fiction book I’d read outside of school and I really feel like I’ve missed out!

I tried to get my dad to read it, as he’s the main person I talk to about books but he said he doesn’t read fiction because he thinks it’s a waste of time. He’s 72 now so probably won’t change. He very much reads for utility as he tends to read books around his hobbies. Occasionally I’ll get him to read a biography or autobiography but it’s very rare. I was very much of the opinion that non fiction was better than fiction and now I feel like a bit of knob for having such a weird little superiority complex 😂.

That seems so low for both to be honest! I'm amazed so many people never read novels.

I'm a man but I don't know how representative I am for the male sex as a whole. But I don't find any of the three options in the OP as reflecting my viewpoint. They're all a bit reductive, to be honest.

I read a lot. I find I go through periods when I'm mostly reading fiction, and other periods when I'm mostly reading non-fiction.

The non-fiction tends to be history and science. When I was a young man I was always a science geek but an interest in history is something that's gradually built as I've got older. I think it's largely driven by a realisation that there's huge amounts of history that I only have a passing knowledge of and I want to know more. It's driven by the same interest I have in watching documentaries on TV or listening to them on the radio and podcasts.

Fiction very much scratches a different itch. As a (very likely overly) broad generalisation, non-fiction is more about things and fiction is more about people. Biographies blur the line between the two. It's the difference between watching a documentary about the holocaust and watching Schindler's List.

I've recently finished The Remains of the Day and just started reading Demon Copperhead. As they're both works of fiction I've no idea where they're going to take me but they're very much centered on personal experience and viewpoints. I find that fascinating.

I'm also halfway though Stasiland where I already knew the former East Germany was immense surveillance state but the book is fleshing out just how pervasive it was.

All that being said, I don't really care what types of books other people read. If you want to spend your time reading books about WWII or you want to fill it reading Mills & Boon then it's no skin off my nose either way.

I am fascinated by this question. I do wonder if there’s something in the fact that men are often (wrongly) conditioned to believe they shouldn’t be interested in inner, emotional lives (either their own or other people’s) and reading fiction is so much about that.

Surely it's just personal preference - and as long as nobody is forced to read against their will, or denied the opportunity to read when they want to, it's all good. You may as well ask why so many fewer men choose to do knitting as a hobby than women do, when both sexes regularly wear clothes; or why so many more men obsess over football than women do.

Far more concerning to me is seeking to address the bizarre mindset - from as young an age as possible - that means that boys and men will frequently instantly discount the idea of reading a particular fiction book when the main character and/or the author is female. As in they would very happily read a book written by John Smith about a character called Andrew, but they would automatically disdain the exact same book written by Jane Smith about Andrea, as 'it's a woman's book; it's clearly not meant or suitable for me'.

@BrezhnevsLuxuriantEyebrows I agree.

Would Harriet Potter by Joanna Rowling have sold so well?

This male / female reading issue also influences book choices in schools to the detriment of girls.

Teachers often have to choose something male orientated so that the boys will grudgingly engage because the girls are more likely to be compliant and put up
with material they may not particularly enjoy.

It makes me cross that girls input and choices are limited in order to support boys but of course this is the way of general adult life all too often as well.

Oh, I'm so glad that you had asked your father why, because that's just what I was wondering. Now I wonder if he followed any sports, and, if so, how he would have reacted if I told him it was a waste of time.

Long ago, The New Yorker magazine, famous for its cartoons, had one with a character saying, "Fiction's nice, but it doesn't get you anywhere." This would have been considered humorous by the very literary readership of TNY.

First, I have to point out that I was asking questions, not necessarily voicing an opinion.

Second, of course any frequenter of this forum, regardless of gender is like to read novels. So I'm not surprised you're a big reader, but I don't think we should consider you as a example of the general public.

I'd agree with you that I don't care what book individuals read. Indeed, I'm happy to see people reading at all. But I do think that certain trends, regardless of the skin on my nose, can be encouraging or discouraging.

Yes, I've often wished that someone would do a specific survey about reading books by, or about, the opposite gender.

Lol! Harriet Potter! I love that.

I was a 70s child. I never saw my mother read a book of any kind. My dad read the odd one, always non fiction.

Now I read fiction. OH has a massive bookshelf full of fiction he never reads.

I have looked up the survey. Which answers many of your questions. Fiction is the most popular of all the categories for both men and women. The lower % of men is largely because reading any book is less popular for men than for women.

The % represent total of all men and women surveyed.
The decline in reading between 2017 and 2022 was nearly the same for men and women, and, as in previous years, more women than men read books last year (56.6% v. 40%).

Taking literature as a whole, which for the NEA includes novels, short stories, poetry, and plays, the decline in the share of men reading was more pronounced, down 5.7 percentage points from 2017, to 29.5%, while 49.2% of women read at least one piece of literature in 2022, down 3.3 percentage points from the previous study.

In the four major nonfiction categories, the decline in reading took what the NEA calls a “significant decline.”

In the biography and memoir category, the percentage of adults who read a book in the 12 months prior to July 2022 fell to 14.9%, from 20% in 2017. In history, 21.8% of adults read a book in the 2017 study period, compared to only 15.8% in 2022. And in the religion category (religious texts or books about religion or spirituality), 18.4% of adults reported reading a book in the 2022 survey period, down from 23% in 2017.

The only nonfiction category that saw readership rise was science (covering both books about science and technology), where participation increased from 12.9% in 2017 to 13.5% in 2022. It was also the only category of the four in which men had greater participation than women (14.9% v. 12.2%).

Another category that held up well in the recent period was graphic novels, where participation held even at 6.7% of all adults, with rates between men and women fairly even at 6.5% and 6.9%, respectively.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/93659-nea-finds-worrying-drop-in-reading-participation.html

I imagine children now will see even less, considering parents may be reading on tablets.

Sorry, I don't know what OH means. Old Husband?

I am sure most of the 16% difference between men and women reading at all is linked to men having a 10% higher participation in the work force rate and an average higher hours per year worked than women.

Interesting. Are you in the book biz?

I'll have to read it when I have more time. Thanks.

No, not in the book biz. Just wanted to know more about the survey being quoted by the NY Times. Which neglected to mention the % they quoted were for literature, which included novels, plays, and poetry. Not just novels.

Right, that's part of what I want to check. In my experience, it's not usually clearly fiction vs. nonfiction, but rather fiction against a bunch of individual nonfiction categories.

That's fair. What I will say is that the majority of my male (and female) friends are also pretty big readers and fiction is usually a large component of that. I'm as likely to have a conversation with one of my female friends about a non-fiction book as with one of my male friends, and vice-versa. I've had a number of excellent fiction books recommended to me by men as well as some brilliant recommendations for non-fiction books by women. But of course it could be that this is a bit self-selecting in that it's possible I'm more likely to sustain friendships with other people who are also big readers regardless of stereotypes.

It's also the case that the types of fiction that my male vs female friends tend to read are not identical. More (but by no means all) of my male friends read science fiction and fantasy than my female friends do - Terry Pratchett being a notable exception who's adored by many of my friends regardless of their sex although this is something that probably says more about my friendship groups than anything else. More of my female friends will read Marian Keyes etc than my male friends will but, again, by no means all.

OH = Other half 😄

Lots of men have written fiction, as opposed to reading it. It would be interesting to know whether that's a declining trend too. And whether the fact that so many women do it now means that it no longer has the prestige for men of being mainly a "man thing". Like education.

Somebody, I think it may have been Thackeray, told Charlotte Brontë that literature should not be the business of a woman's life. Some women did write of course, even then, but that sort of attitude was probably quite common.

Edited to add: and quite a lot of men's novels have been specifically about women. Eg Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Diana of the Crossways, The Rainbow, Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

Did you want to offer an opinion on the question posed in the OP? Why do you think the difference exists? You felt the potential explanations given by the OP were reductive, so why not talk us through your non-reductive theory/theories?

OP I've read a few things that suggest this and the lower level of engagement with reading by men generally is related to seeing fewer 'role models' reading as they're growing up.

I can’t access the article ( payeall ) and I
must be an exception as I read a lot of fiction. I’ll attempt to answer your questions though

1. Yes perhaps men prefer solution oriented subject matter . Self /Help books , manuals and biographies of famous ( or infamous ) men .
2. I think scrolling on devices has replaced reading for men and women in many cases as a solitary pursuit
3. I think reading fiction requires patience, focus and empathy ( to the extent of understanding protagonists’ actions and motivations) .

There have been studies on this, including one via Nielsen Book Research. They all show the same tendency. Women read books by men or women in approximately equal numbers. Men seldom read books by women. Of the top ten bestselling male authors in the UK (including Tolkien, Dickens, Stephen King and Lee Child) 55% of their readers are male, while 45% are female. But of the top ten bestselling IK female authors (including Margaret Atwood, Austen, Danielle Steele, Jojo Moyes), only 19% of their readership is male.

And it’s not just the casual reader. Men are not just likely to read books by women, they’re far less likely to recommend or review them, or to shortlist or advocate for them when judging a prize. Reviewers for the LRB and the New York RoB skew overwhelmingly male. Again, huge numbers of statistics bear this out. Anne Enright, when she was Fiction Laureate, commissioned someone to go through all fiction reviews and reviewers in the Irish Times for decades, with predictable results. Similar books by men and women are judged differently. David Nicholls or Nick Hornsby, writing books about relationships and family life are taken far more seriously, and more reviewed, than women writing in similar modes, who are sidelined as ‘chick lit’.

Links to some of this here.

https://lithub.com/why-are-so-many-men-still-resistant-to-reading-women/

'Chick lit' is such a dismissive, patronising term. I mean, I can possibly see that it may be considered a legitimate specific sub-genre - like the Andy McNabb-style books presumably aimed at 'blokey' men, although I can't think of an equivalent term for those off the top of my head (testo-texts?!); but to automatically dismiss ALL books written by female authors and/or centring a female character(s) as fluffy 'girly' slop that men would certainly never waste their precious time reading is just crass, undisguised misogyny.

I notice in my own DH that he much prefers non fiction. The occasional novel but mostly nf.

TBH I am the same. I find new releases a bit meh lately although I do give them a try, but maybe it's my advanced age and cynicism but I find a lot of fiction these days is either self indulgent, inaccessible, or daft! Some beauties though, but not as many as when I was an avid fiction reader when a bit younger. Maybe I just don't have the patience to persevere much anymore.

I now read biography and history with the odd novel thrown in. I'm finding non fiction much more engaging, but that might just be my stage in life and one day I'll get back to novels again.