The Things We Remember
Art created by men is better: That’s what I was taught by the fiction I read when I grew up. I remember one book was about a girl whose father, on his deathbed, said that she would be an artist. She was a fabulous pianist, and ended up realizing that was an art, too, but before that, she tried to be a visual artist.
She was talented. We readers knew this because a famous artist came to her school and judged their exhibition. Her work was the only work he—in a blind viewing—could not tell was done by a woman. Her drawings looked like they were done by a man, and thus, she was good.
I am certain that is not the only time I got that message. Sadly, I am still getting that message.
Oprah’s choices have been suspect. Since 2005, 100% of the 13 books she’s chosen for her book club have been written by men. Since 2003, 17 of the 19 authors whose work she’s chosen have been men.
Publisher’s Weekly’s choice for top 10 books of 2009 were all written by men. Every week, Wendy calculates the percentage of women authors on the NYT Bestseller list as opposed to the percentage of women authors reviewed in the NYT Boo Review. Not pretty.
It’s a well-known fact that, in general, women will read both female and male leads, while men will mostly only read books with male leads. This starts at a young age: even J.K. Rowling was asked to use her initials instead of Joanne, in the hopes that more boys would read her story. I’ve heard tell of several middle-grade authors who were encouraged to make their MC a boy. The PW list, as She Writes points out, was dominated by male heroines.
Moonrat has a great post up, with some kick-ass recommendations I can’t wait to get my hands on. Why have I not seen or heard of these books?
Here’s another question: Are women encouraged by the publishing business to write to genre? Before the front tables became dominated by not-new fiction this year, I rarely saw a female author who wasn’t writing a particular genre, if you include women’s fiction. Is that label a problem?
Women will write what will sell, just as much as men will write what will sell. It’s the nature of art: no one has time to be great unless they can be supported by their art.
So what gives? How can we fix this? Were you given the same messages as a child as I was?
24 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Natasha Fondren is an eBook developer, writer, and classical pianist. After a fifteen-year piano teaching career, she moved to Arizona and built a book design business. She enjoys the lizards and desert heat in Arizona with her Border Collie, Padfoot, and her cat, Dixie Doodle.
That’s funny ’cause I didn’t get that message. I got the message of Princess Leia, a kick-ass woman. I got the message that women can do anything, and I wanted to be tough and brave and capable like Leia. I was eight; even the hair was something to admire.
I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t draw lines. I don’t care if a book is written by a man or a woman. But I can’t ignore that Moonrat’s right and men DO get more marketing (at least in terms of giveaways that bloggers share with me). So… at my Rocks ‘n Reads blog (click the tab at West of Mars dot com), I’ll be starting Women on Wednesday. WOW.
We’ll feature a book written by a woman every week. Leave your link and I’ll fuse it into the post. Visit each other. Learn about some good books.
There. I’m trying to be part of the solution. The question is, like Win a Book, is it enough???
I thought Princess Leia was SO pretty, Susan! I wanted to be her so bad! And also the Princess from the Neverending Story. I was so envious.
I love your WOW idea!
I think that a piece of the scary thing about this (for me) is that the generation of women in college now believe in general that the feminist movement isn’t necessary anymore, and want to distance themselves from it.
And yet, I still see inequities all around us, and not just limited to the publishing industry.
I’m going to go read A Room of One’s Own again.
Heather, I totally believed that. I was totally like that. It’s become increasingly evident to me, in the last few years, that it’s still a problem.
Like a lot of other inequalities!
Susan, I have my issues with Princess Leia, the only female IN Star Wars, who seemed to spend more time needing to be rescued than actually kicking ass (yes, she did kick a bit of ass, but she’d never be a Jedi warrior, alas.) I wouldn’t think the gold slave-girl outfit is much of a feminist statement. I preferred to play like I was Luke running around the neighborhoods with the boys, but that’s neither here nor there. I’ll check out your blog–especially on Wednesdays.
Thanks for the link, Natasha. I actually calculate the NYT Book Review stats just for myself, so that I can spend Saturday morning fuming over coffee for little while before I flip to the front section.
I’m not sure if women are encouraged to write genre. There certainly are a lot of genre writers who are women, but we make a good showing in the literary field as well–Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners are often women. I think the top three this past year were all female. However, if they hadn’t been finalists, would most people have heard of them?
It’s hard to judge in retrospect, Wendy. At the time, when the only Star Trek woman was hardly more than a secretary, Princess Leia was a step in the right direction. Today, it would be a step backwards. I might be wrong, though, LOL!
Maybe you could share those stats some time! And that’s wonderful about the Pulitzer. Great news.
Uhh, Wendy, I was only eight at the time I formed that opinion. That was my perception and it shaped how I viewed the world — and who I could be. That’s all.
It’s kind of weird because I am certain the vast majority of people who read fiction regularly are women. As far as I am aware reading novels is something that the typical American male just doesn’t do often, if at all, or admit to it. Of course men I now read and men who blog read, but they are, I think, in a minority.
Yes, Eric. Totally. Isn’t that weird? That’s just weird. True but weird. One can only wonder if we are own worst enemy?
This applies more to music, but there’s a great passage in Malcolm Gladwell’s BLINK about this very thing. A major orchestra (can’t remember which) set up an audition process where players auditioned from behind a screen because one of the committee’s relatives was trying out and no one wanted to be accused of nepotism.
Well, one woman tried out and everyone was shocked she was a woman. She made it into the orchestra, only to have the same conductor who hired her suddenly turn. She had to fight to keep her job, and she did because she proved she was hired strictly because she was such a good player.
This is an extreme case of blatant misogyny, but I think it gets the point across. I know that EVERYONE except the big sellers struggle for market share, but I do think there are plenty of women out there not getting enough attention for all the wrong reasons.
Wow, I hadn’t heard that story. I’m surprised. That’s awful. And just think of the Vienna Philharmonic, an all-male orchestra until the late nineties. It still is, mostly, with only a handful of women.
Actually, “this very thing” may be an overstatement . . . but you get the idea.
LOL, Stacy! Totally!
Interesting story by Stacy about the orchestra player. I actually reverse discriminate. I read books by men, but I’m more likely to read books by women. The first books I remember being passionate about (besides fairy tales), were Nancy Drew books. Written by a woman (though as we’ve since discovered, ghost written by one). Women usually write the kind of books I like to read.
Edie, in general, I’ve been reading a lot of male authors lately, which disturbs me. I think you’re right, though. Most book readers are women, most book buyers are women, most women by women authors… so why the problem on the lists? Puzzling.
As a kid I certainly read mostly books with male lead characters, and many women writers used male sounding names or initials. C. L. Moore and Andre Norton. I know plenty of women writers I like but I do feel some caution at times with a new female author because I’m afraid there will be too much romance. Probably I shouldn’t feel this way, but I still do to a certain extent.
Charles, I was thinking the exact same thing when I was looking at Moonrat’s list. A whole lot of women put in romance or love, no matter the genre. Strangely, I don’t often want to read it anymore. I used to gobble up romance at the rate of two or three books a day, but now it’s two or three books a year. I don’t know what happened to me.
That’s an interesting point.
When I first heard about this I got really pissed off, then I realized I don’t pay much attention to the sex of the writers that I read. I think I have a fair balance between male and female – -and have probably read more female authors lately — but I don’t set out to choose one over the other.
I love Moonrat’s idea for the female list!
I was concerned that I read too many men, so I listed my auto-buy authors, and it was split 50/50 precisely, LOL.
Natasha, I haven’t given this a lot of thought lately. I was surprised by the lists you mentioned and large number of men as opposed to women on them. I read a lot of YA and the majority of what I read is written by women. I’m going to pay more attention to the adult fiction. Thanks for the information.
Paul, I hadn’t either! It was news to me, too.
Thanks for continuing the conversation, Natasha
Thanks for starting it, Moonrat!
I think it’s a given that this message is still all over, and it’s not only writers. Male artists are the serious ones, while women paint pretty pictures, except for a few who are willing to fight for recognition, and have to be ten times as good as a man to get half the credit. Men are sculptors, while women… well, I’m sure a lot of women sculpt too, but I can’t name any of them. Men are chefs, women are cooks, with a few recent exceptions.
The position of “secretary” used to be one with good upward mobility; a secretary was expected to be in training for his boss’s position, or at least was expected to move upward in the organization. (Positions like Secretary of State are hold-overs from a time when secretary was an important, respected job.) Then women started to get jobs as secretaries and it became a dead end. Hanging the job title on women meant stripping that title of all respect.
Even things like the “Best Actor” and “Best Actress” award assumes that there’s some inherent difference. What would happen if everyone competed together?
It’d be interesting to see how many British actors (writers, musicians, other artists) have been knighted versus actresses (etc.) I can name a few Dame actresses, but a lot more Sir actors. Several Sir musicians, but no Dames.
Men have most of the high status, authority positions in every field which isn’t feminine by long tradition; women do most of those jobs too now, but they’re still the rara avis. And even in elementary education, overwhelmingly female, my experience growing up was that principals and vice principals were men.
Things are improving, yes, but we have a long way to go before the cultural assumption is one of gender equality.
And the problem with ignoring authorial gender when you read — assuming that’s even possible, and I have strong doubts except in cases where a woman author is using a masculine or neutral pseud — is that men do tend to get more of the promotion, more of the high-status reviews, more of the prime bookstore real estate everywhere except the romance corner. If you read the books which fall naturally under your eye and hand, you’ll probably end up reading more men than women.
It’s like claiming to be “colorblind” — going with the flow means reading ninety-some percent white authors, because the authors of color get less promotion, less marketing, fewer reviews on mainstream sites, and in some cases (back to romance again — the single largest genre) their books aren’t even shelved with those of white authors. Ignoring the gender (or race) of authors means accepting the sexist (or racist) behavior of the industry.
Angie, stepping off her soapbox