Hanne Willekens

academic

Hanne Willekens is a doctoral student in Scandinavian studies at the University of Ghent in the Netherlands. She has conducted research on gender balance in the Swedish book industry, particularly in light of the ongoing discussion about its feminization, as highlighted in Åsa Beckman's column in Dagens Nyheter. Her findings reveal a significant female majority among leadership positions in major Swedish publishing houses, with women comprising 70% of executives and 78.8% of other staff. Willekens' work sheds light on the increasing representation of female authors, who accounted for 64.8% of fiction titles published between 2018 and 2022, indicating a potential shift towards greater female influence in the literary landscape.