I agree there is for sure an oversight on the part of counselors when it comes to writing. Sure, there is the trade side, but then there is also careers like copywriting that have practically identical school plans. Copywriting is probably one of the more secure and easily hireable careers at the moment, and is definitely growing career choice. With poetry though, I've noticed an upswing over the past five to ten years. Even beyond just the rapidly growing market for spoken-word, there's been an influx of literary magazines that cater to very specific styles and formats of poetry. There's also been a renewed interest in poetry as a form for marginalized people to voice themselves. Larger magazines and publishers are picking up on this, from the New Yorker to Agni. I can't speak towards the mass-consumption of poetry, but there are obviously people stilled buying poems. I also agree as to there being highly troubling statistics regarding awards. Also, thank you for going through an pulling those stats. It confuses me as to why you didn't include Rubery, KONS, or Windham-Campbell. Are they just too new? I think that the purpose of these awards tends to be to honor those who have made advances in literature, who are changing the effect and status of the written word. I don't think that anything one would find in an airport bookstore would do that. These awards are in a way, compensation for writers with such a limited market. Thank you for the vote of confidence towards my future career. The study though doesn't say female writers get paid less, but rather just refers to overall earnings. In light of the article here, if the experience is in anyway average, then women must actually getting paid more per piece, which isn't how the business of writing works at all. You should also note that as of 2014, the gender gap has reversed for writers overall, with men earning about 75% of what female authors do. Finally, being male does not in any way immediately put one in high brow. Look at Brown or Paterson. They are two of the most successful authors today, but it definitely isn't literature.
James Patterson has been the top earning author for quite a while. Shades and Hunger Games etc are effectively blips to his streak as I understand it. Most of his income is from books while theirs is from movies. He, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, and Stephen King (who seems to be on the downhill, health maybe?) are more successful than Dan Brown. My mother has been reading all of their books for as long as I can remember, and I'm in my thirties. Danielle Steele is the only woman author she reads as much as best I can recall. Besides, E.L. James is a masculine pen name, and look, Rowling decided it was going to be better to publish under a very male pseudonym after being successful with the pseudo-real masculine name "J.K. Rowling". Sure she got pigeonholed, but she also didn't choose a female pen name for good reason. J.K. Rowling didn't used to have a middle name. She adopted the second letter because her agent wanted her to sound more masculine so boys would read her boy-focused kids series because boys don't like reading women's writing. But sure, we can consider the earnings as "for women" rather than "for male pseudonyms" if you really want to ignore that bias. You shouldn't, it's basically supporting the assertion that you'll do fine as a man. You want to believe. Being male doesn't automatically make one's work high-brow, no. Hence my last line in the previous comment. On the other hand, selling unhealthy relationships seems to be a recipe for a one-hit wonder series that's not actually sustainable for individual authors. Except for the mills and boon type authors. I think most of those authors are moving to self-publishing on kindle now to get more than 2k a book.