Do you think fantasy has a male publishing crisis?

There was a thread a few days ago about if it possible for someone like Bakker to get published today. The general opinion is probably no. Maybe, I'm biased, but I think it even worse when if your a male it might be impossible to get traditionally published.

If you go to your local bookshop and go into the fantasy section and look at the hard backs 95% of them will be by women that are usually targeting other women.

You can check yourself here

https://www.waterstones.com/category/science-fiction-fantasy-horror/fantasy/format/16

Just going into my local waterstones today and looking at the fantasy hard back section, there were about 85 books, and only 4 was written by men. They were James Islington The Will of the Many, John Gwynne Fury of the Gods, Brandon Sanderson Wind and Truth, and Peter V Brett Hidden Queen.

Contrast it with Crime / Mystery https://www.waterstones.com/category/crime-thrillers-mystery/format/16 which is 50/50

Paperbacks was more even because classic fantasy like Dune, LOTRs, Game of Thrones. Over Christmas there was a very large amount of Fourth Wing, and ACOTAR just under the table so they must sell like hot cakes.

(I think the backlog of classic fantasy is just masking the problem, also people tend to talk about stuff that isn't true today for example women changing to a male names to get published)

Anyone else worried about this?

My personal theory is that women read 10x more than men, and men are just playing video games instead. I go to waterstones everyday and for every 1 man I see 10 women. Plus romantasy readers tend to consume a lot of books.

I think maybe it's a bit hard to compete as a man in writing today. A new male writer might need to be better than say Frank Herbert or Robert Jordan to get published, however a woman just needs to be somewhat around Sarah J Maas level.

I also think if publisher tried to fix it, they would have made the same mistake Disney made with Marvel and Star Wars (just the genders reversed), and publisher would just lose money.