A shorter version of this feature was printed in the Guardian yesterday, on Friday 3rd June, but due to a glitch hasn't been put up on the web site yet. Following requests for links from women colleagues within the publishing industry I have put it up here.
This year’s Dolman travel writing book prize has longlisted 8 men and 2 women. The previous year the shortlist was 6 men and 1 woman. The Walter Scott prize for historical fiction has shortlisted 5 men and 1 woman this year. There were double that number of women on the shortlist last year: 2. One of them, Hilary Mantel, won. The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has returned a shortlist of 5 men and 1 woman every single year for the last five years. In 2006 it went totally mad and had 2 women and 4 men! Since 2001, the IMPAC prize has had 11 men winners and 0 women. The Samuel Johnson prize has a 2011 longlist of 15 books by men, 1 co-authored by a mixed pair and 2 books by women. In the previous 12 years it has had shortlists of 5 men and just 1 woman 7 times. In 2009 it was 6 men and no women. It has been 4 men and 2 women three times. In 2003 they had their year of insanity: 3 men, 3 women. The Ondaatje Prize has honoured 7 men and 1 woman. The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic literature has been awarded to 10 men and 1 woman. The David Cohen prize has honoured 7 men, 2 women and one joint win. Its 1993 winner was V S Naipaul, who this week at Hay expressed his derision for women writers, who are “unequal” to him, writing “tosh” with our “narrow view of the world.”
This year’s Dolman travel writing book prize has longlisted 8 men and 2 women. The previous year the shortlist was 6 men and 1 woman. The Walter Scott prize for historical fiction has shortlisted 5 men and 1 woman this year. There were double that number of women on the shortlist last year: 2. One of them, Hilary Mantel, won. The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has returned a shortlist of 5 men and 1 woman every single year for the last five years. In 2006 it went totally mad and had 2 women and 4 men! Since 2001, the IMPAC prize has had 11 men winners and 0 women. The Samuel Johnson prize has a 2011 longlist of 15 books by men, 1 co-authored by a mixed pair and 2 books by women. In the previous 12 years it has had shortlists of 5 men and just 1 woman 7 times. In 2009 it was 6 men and no women. It has been 4 men and 2 women three times. In 2003 they had their year of insanity: 3 men, 3 women. The Ondaatje Prize has honoured 7 men and 1 woman. The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic literature has been awarded to 10 men and 1 woman. The David Cohen prize has honoured 7 men, 2 women and one joint win. Its 1993 winner was V S Naipaul, who this week at Hay expressed his derision for women writers, who are “unequal” to him, writing “tosh” with our “narrow view of the world.”
Despite our toshy narrowness women are everywhere in the book world and even on the bestseller lists. We are the overwhelming majority of book buyers, book readers, book editors, agents, PRs, event attendees, festival-goers, champions of literature, literature teachers, writers and book club members. We read the comically major majority, in a really major way, of all fiction. We support the entire industry from within and without. We are everywhere except in the nicest place: the prestige podium, that zone of acclaim furnished with prizes, honours, respect, speaking invitations, special commissions, credit, mentions, recommendations and a place in the canon.
It’s rank misogyny, sure, but it’s mainly misogyny’s simpering complement, its geisha: man-worshipping. A man does a shit in a potty and it is called a work of genius; a woman produces a work of genius and it's treated like a shit in a potty. Many of the juries for the above prizes are laudably mixed, yet somehow all the perks are given to the men, often by women who are just the most astounding, patriarchy-propping, desperate, grovelling little manworshippers. The committee for World Book Night 2011 had a majority of women, who chose just 8 books out of 25 by women. Know what wasn't on their list? Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, On Beauty, White Teeth, Brick Lane, Small Island, Hotel World, Possession, The Children's Book, Beyond Black, The Cast Iron Shore, Hearts and Minds, The Poisonwood Bible, any Harry Potter or Jacqueline Wilson, The God of Small Things, any Doris Lessing, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, any Rose Tremain, Susan Hill... The longlist of ignored genius women is truly endless - and many of the perpetrators were women. It's a chilling reversal because when the initial surveys for WBN (focusing on lending libraries and readers' habits) were done, women authors - Jane Austen and Harper Lee - topped two of the three surveys.
It's strange because when men themselves are called upon to give their Top Tens, their mentions, their to-read must-haves, their shortlists, their ranks of genius and tips for the top - and again, typically, the media calls upon them 10 times more often than it calls upon women - they give the power and opportunities to other men, not women. Elle magazine asked literary liar James Frey to give his top 8 favourite reads: he mentioned 8 men and 0 women. Vogue asked Peter Carey to give his top 7 novels about servants and masters when his last novel came out: 7 men, 0 women. Both these men, knowing that these magazines have a virtually all-female readership, used this woman-given moment promote their own books and to help as many other men as they possibly could, to make their position absolutely clear. If they disdained the world of women they should have refused to feature in these magazines. Instead, they took the perk and then threw the magazines' support straight back in women's faces.
It's strange because when men themselves are called upon to give their Top Tens, their mentions, their to-read must-haves, their shortlists, their ranks of genius and tips for the top - and again, typically, the media calls upon them 10 times more often than it calls upon women - they give the power and opportunities to other men, not women. Elle magazine asked literary liar James Frey to give his top 8 favourite reads: he mentioned 8 men and 0 women. Vogue asked Peter Carey to give his top 7 novels about servants and masters when his last novel came out: 7 men, 0 women. Both these men, knowing that these magazines have a virtually all-female readership, used this woman-given moment promote their own books and to help as many other men as they possibly could, to make their position absolutely clear. If they disdained the world of women they should have refused to feature in these magazines. Instead, they took the perk and then threw the magazines' support straight back in women's faces.
Read the Guardian's literary Top Ten [war novels/love scenes/car chases/favourite writers] series, count, get the sick bag ready and see that that the hundreds of men invited to give their lists keep the numbers of women at 3 out of 10 or less, as in this latest example, with shocking consistency, across hundreds of entries and dozens of criteria. They have made it clear that they neither read nor rate women's work. This would not matter at all - I am certainly not going to force a man do to something he hates - were it not for the fact that the feeling is not mutual. Women worship male writers. But when I have attended major book events, like seeing Arundhati Roy, Doris Lessing, Sarah Waters, Jeanette Winterson, Nicole Krauss, Jackie Kaye, Lionel Shriver and many others read, the audience has been 99% women. In events with male authors the audience has still been 50-60% women. This support does not go both ways. Men stay away from women writers in their droves; when asked to explain themselves, they come out with open insults which demonstrate - thank you - their ignorance and derision with astounding transparency. There are, of course, some exceptions, and thank heavens I am friends with them. But across 20 years of experience in this area I have been shocked by the sheer level of ignoring, insulting and casual belittling of women's work that goes on at all levels of the culture, excepting the publishing industry itself, which I truly believe is non-sexist.
Those readers unconnected with the industry might argue, reasonably, that more books by men than women are brought out, that the media covers a fair and representative selection of what's out there and that prizes reflect this neutral imbalance in numbers. This is not the case. The great upside of the digital and information revolution is that publishers' catalogues can now be accessed on line, each of which shows just how many fascinating books are written by women at all levels, in all genres, in non-fiction and fiction, with many different approaches, voices and interests. The books come out and they are ignored, the men are celebrated and elevated and the few women featured (the female to male media ratio should be 2:8 or 3:7, maximum) are talked down.
Every study into reading habits has show that women will faithfully buy, read and support books by both sexes while men 'tend to' (this is the phrase which is always used when people report this little hate-fact) read books only by men. Swallow that for a second, ladies-in-denial: they have such incredible disdain and loathing for us that they will not even touch a book by us. Meanwhile the ladies are busy helping the chaps as much as their slavish little souls can stand. I suppose, if you're a female masochist, being ignored by the artist men your life is dedicated to helping is a prize in itself, though not a very prestigious one.
Thank God for the Orange Prize. And here’s a curtsey for the gents who’re filled with incoherent anger at the sight of us females who are involved with it. It's something to do with the notion of us all together that makes them boil with absolute rage, so that when they open their mouths, just any amount of jeering misogyny, hatred, ignorance and anger comes out. They say there should be a prize just for men, as though all of society is not one big prize for men, lovingly polished by millions of submissive women. Look at the statistics above, which seem to imply that across all the years, across all the genres, across all the criteria, across all the countries and cultures, the languages and the markets, women are just 0%-10% as good as men, who are geniuses. A woman bringing out a book, any book, about anything, can expect not to be reviewed in papers or magazines, not to be covered on the radio or TV, not to be invited to read or speak, not to win any prizes, not to be recommended or mentioned in subsequent years, not to have her career aided by prestigious teaching appointments, not to be absorbed into the canon, not to be studied at school, college or university and not to have any kind of legacy at all. It is a classic model: the women do all the work, the women even write the bestsellers which fund the whole industry, the women buy the tickets, organise the events, produce the programmes, they give underpaid or unacknowledged time, effort, labour, dedication and money... these things are taken from them...and every single one of the meaningful rewards and cultural credit goes to men, now, posthumously and for all eternity.
I think that an all-male book prize is actually a great idea and will happily support it. But there’s one rule: the angry men administering the prize cannot then exploit women's replaceable, overworked, underpaid, unacknowledged labour. That means the cleaners, caterers, PRs, producers, assistants, administrators, interns, front-of-house, organisers and researchers cannot be women. It means your partners will not do the childcare while you have your meetings. Let's see how far you get.
