2017: THE YEAR TO END MALE BIAS IN THE LITERARY MEDIA … HERE’S HOW

Women buy two thirds of books. Women writers dominate the best seller lists and came out blazing in the 2016 Costa shortlists. So why doesn’t the literary media give us the editorial space we deserve?

Two years ago, VIDA conducted a survey of some of the key literary titles in the UK and US. Its results were both shocking and depressing (The London Review of Books was found to have featured 527 male authors and critics, compared with 151 women, for example). Writing about the survey, The Guardian claimed that the picture ‘is beginning to change.’ After my own research, I’m not so sure.

I often rely on The Week to catch up on news. Last March, after a particularly busy week, I was scanning the book pages when I noticed that each of the three reviews featured a book written by a man. Not only that, but its regular column titled An Author Picks Six Favourite Books, also featured a man. And his six favourite books were also all written by men.

So, why do the book contents of The Week matter?  They matter because The Week claims to reflect the British broadsheets. The Week is, in effect, a condensed version of our quality media. This is how it markets itself (“the best of the British and international media”) and this is how its editor justified the gender bias of its literary pages.

Before I complained to the editor, I scanned four preceding copies of The Week. Just in case the issue I’d read was atypical. Sadly, it was not.  I included a summary in my letter (just so the editor didn’t think I was being unreasonable):

Novel of the Week

26/03/16 – Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama (Male)

19/03/16 – Freya by Anthony Quinn (Male)

12/03/16 – Anatomy of a Soldier by Harry Parker (Male)

27/02/16 – Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift (Male)

Book of the Week

26/03/16 – Broken Vows: Tony Blair by Tom Bower (Male writing about a Male)

19/03/16 – Hitler: A Biog Vol 1 by Volker Ullrich (Male writing about a Male)

12/03/16 – David Astor by Jeremy Lewis (Male writing about a Male)

27/02/16 – Comrade Corbyn by Rosa Prince (Female writing about a Male)

My Favourite Books

26/03/16 – chosen by Anthony Gardner (Male).

19/03/16 – chosen by Tom Holland (Male)

12/03/16 – chosen by Terry Deary (Male)

27/02/16 – chosen by Sebastian Faulks (Male)

Unreasonable? I don’t think so.

The editor replied, blaming the gender bias on our mainstream press and suggesting I monitor the broadsheets to confirm this. I don’t have time for that. And isn’t that what I’m paying The Week to do?  Instead, I started keeping random copies and vowed to analyse them – one day.

After a year when the Costa Award fully reflected the extraordinary talent of Britain’s female writers, I was optimistic that change was afoot. Until I read The Week’s 2016 Books of the Year page (16/12/16), based on “The critics’ top eight choices …in national newspapers, the London Evening Standard, The Spectator and the New Statesman.” Eight books were featured: a mix of fiction, non-fiction and memoir.  Of the “top eight choices”, only one was by a woman. Is this really what our “national critics” think?

Time to trawl through my box of 15 random back issues. My findings were equally dismal. The coveted Book of the Week slot featured 14 male writers and only one female writer. In the equally-coveted Novel of the Week slot, ten male writers were featured and only five female writers – a ratio quite unlike the Costa shortlist which included three female writers and one male writer, or the fiction best seller list which (last week) was split equally between male and female authors.

I spoke to this year’s Costa judge, and literary editor of The Observer, Lisa O’Kelly, about why gender bias still exists and what we can do about it. “The worlds of literature and journalism have been male-dominated – and slow-moving – for centuries.  I’m very mindful of it at The Observer and, although I don’t keep a chart, I regularly tot up the number of male to female reviewers and male to female-authored books.  I aim for parity, not necessarily in each issue but certainly over time.  I suspect I’m an anomaly.”

So does sexism start in the publishing industry? Some writers have accused agents and publishers of taking books with a male by-line more seriously. Not so, says O’Kelly.“Publishers know that more women buy books and they invest in their female authors as heavily as their male authors. It’s the media that’s still rife with bias.”

O’Kelly believes many editors are barely aware of this, but says they need to take steps to prevent it. “No one thinks male writers are better or more serious but I suspect the bias is deeply entrenched. The only way to change it is to monitor it.  Readers need to point out disparities so that editors have no reason to leave it to chance.”

Better writers than me have written powerfully and movingly about the dangerous and mistaken assumption that male writing is culturally more important. We all know this is rubbish. But this out-dated and regressive assumption won’t shift until all literary editors give more space to women reviewers and women writers. Prizes like the Man Booker and Costa have made huge leaps forward with their 2016 shortlists. The literary media (as mirrored in The Week) still lags behind.

I’d like to see more editors take a leaf out of O’Kelly’s book. Or go one step further: Frances Morris, Tate Modern’s director, made the brave decision to insist on 50% of exhibitors being female. Isn’t it time we asked the editors of our literary media and national press to do the same?

So I’m starting 2017 with a polite question for the literary editor of The Times: In his round-up of forthcoming books (31/12/16), why did he include 15 male but only four female writers?

I’ll let you know when I get an answer.  In the meantime, please join me by monitoring a broadsheet of your choice in 2017 and taking a few minutes out to point out any gender bias to the editor. Perhaps if enough of us do this, we can (eventually) make a difference.

 

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Annabel Abbs is the author of The Joyce Girl, and tells the story of Lucia Joyce, a dancer in 1920s Paris and the daughter of James Joyce.  It won  the 2016 Impress Prize and was a Guardian ‘Reader Pick of the Year’ 2016.

She lives with her family in London.  Find out more at www.annabelabbs.com, @annabelabbs and www.facebook.com/abbsannabel/

Tags: featured, VIDA, women writers

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