In your experience, do women tend to read for pleasure more than men?

It does seem that way. I’ve met only a few men that like to read for pleasure, but I know many women that like to, even if though they do not have enough time.
I was talking to two guys just a little older than me, and one of them said, “Who even reads anymore?” and the other man agreed. I was a little disappointed by that statement/question.

My fiancé reads rock star autobiographies
My dad reads car magazines lol
My son reads a lot. He’s very into history so he reads a lot of books on history. He’s also into Tom Clancy, Shakespeare, old Stephen King, etc.

It does seem that way. In my experience, women (in general) read more overall and definitely more fiction. Men (in general) seem to gravitate towards non-fiction or twiddling their thumbs.
I’ll try to see if there is any data out there…
Edit: I will try to find more later, but this might be a relevant article (or not). Or this.

Yes

I think they were both relevant @tom_g.

I know more females that like to read for fun than males. I do have a lot of males around me that like to read for fun, including my husband and son. My husband and I even share some series because we like to read some of the same books.

Women…do you prefer fiction or non fiction?

I prefer fiction. Trashy fiction. lol
I love Jackie Collins. That should tell you everything you need to know.
I also love James Patterson, Stephen King, Danielle Steel, Stephanie Meyer….. And Rosemunde Pilcher. The Shell Seekers was friggin amazing!!

I used to sell books for a living, and I would submit that education level matters far more than sex. Also, how “pleasure” is defined changes with education level. I take more pleasure from reading a textbook whether or not it’s directly related to my work, or (for example) a biography, than a trashy novel. I’m not saying that the reading material dictates the education of the reader by any means, only that on average, these are the trends I’ve seen.

I would define “pleasure” as reading something because you want to read it, not because you HAVE to read it. Although, I have found everything that I’ve ever been required to read to be pleasurable to one degree or another.

I wouldn’t say more women read for pleasure than men. Playboy has great articles.
But seriously, my step father loved to read. My boyfriend reads more often than I do. I don’t like stereotypes because it all depends who you ask.

Wow! Where you been @ItalianPrincess1217? Welcome back!

I missed you guys! I couldn’t stay away any longer :)

Last time we saw you you were preparing to have a baby! Look what happened!

Publisher’s stats show that women buy far more books than men, and male authors are published far more often than women. These stats are out here on the net, but I don’t time to dig them up right now. But these stats are extremely important to authors who intend on publishing their work. Augie is an editor, maybe she knows where to find these stats, or try any national publisher’s org.

@Espiritus_Corvus But what do those stats have to do with reading for pleasure?

All the women and men in my family enjoy reading fiction, including my sons.

do women tend to read for pleasure more than men? I haven’t noticed this. The only difference I’ve noticed with women is that many of them prefer romance novels. I can’t stand romance novels.

@glacial I don’t know. When it’s in social, I just write what I feel like writing.

I know several men that enjoy reading, but it does seem many do not.
I’m a female and prefer non-fiction over novels, and any woman that reads romance novels should be eliminated from the gene pool. lol

I hate romance novels too @jonsblond.

@Dutchess_III Ya mean @Coloma right? Or did I miss something? haha

At you too @Coloma, but @jonsblond said it first at the very end of her post. :)

Oh. Duh.

Not in my experience.

It used to be just about even, but now all they do is play computer games.

We watched a film about the correlation between reading trends and gender in one of my EWS classes. The apparent deficit is that young boys are not encouraged to read for pleasure in favour of developing other hobbies. In my experiences growing up, everybody in my household read for pleasure. We frequented the library on a regular basis. My younger sibling and I both majored in English Literature and my older brother majored in Communications (but he still reads a TON for pleasure ranging from graphic novels to dense encyclopedic information.)

Our English faculty was split fairly evenly between men and women, but our student body had a 3:1 female to male ratio. However, I do not think that is an accurate indicator about reading for pleasure as I met many, many English majors who rarely, if ever, enjoyed reading for fun. Go figure.

I think all children should be read to and encouraged to read. The majority of kids in my area did not have access to books (language barriers, lack of encouragement, no trips to the library, etc) and did not pursue reading for pleasure.

Yes. That’s all I’ve got.

One thing I’ve noticed from working in Young Adult literature is SO much of it is written for girls. Generally, girls will read books with male and female protagonists, but boys rarely read books with female protagonists. It’s getting better, but the market definitely favors young women over young men.

Middle and High school stages are the ages that most kids either stop reading for leisure or continue it for the rest of their lives. Some boys get lost because they don’t feel much that speaks to them on the shelves. There are some excellent “guys lit” books out there, but they get eclipsed by “chick lit” books.

This has been my personal experience… I read a lot of books.

When I was in HS my boyfriend mentioned several times that he’d only read one book in his life, “My Darling My Hamburger.” Man. I read about 2 books a week.

One time, over the summer, our library had a reading contest. They wanted us to read something like, 20 books by the beginning of school. It seemed overwhelming to me, but my Mom said I could do it easily. She was right.