J. K. Rowling who wrote Harry Potter said her publisher told her to assume a masculine publishing name because it would give her more impact and force in the publishing authority if she was mistaken for a male since men had more agency than women in many professional domains and are often stereotyped more positively than female professionals.
I had similar concerns when I was trying to establish my career as a writer, that I would have to come up with a gender neutral name to mask my identity or I would not have customers in male dominated societies and countries.
But then I realized there are unique vantage points that females specialize in that males are not as well endowed in, such as the ability to tolerate high degrees of emotional stress, the ability to interpret human psychology, the ability to encode the behaviour of outlandish characters that are atypical, and the ability to bring comfort and relaxation to an angry or depressed person.
So now, I view my female identity as an advantage in the professional world, and not as a secret that must be hidden when I write books on the genres I choose and no photograph is given to match my author name.
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