Sadly, March 2013 wasn’t a bad month; it wasn’t a blip or an anomalyor one of those months where they howevernowforgot women can be as talented and culturally applicableas men.
In 2012, the sexual activitysplit at the The London Review of Books (LRB) was just as egregious.
Of an annual total of 276 publishreviews, 66 were written by women.
There were 74 womanlyauthors deemed worthy of reviewing in 2012, a figure dwarfed by the 203 male authors afforded scrutiny and prominence.
Although these stats rankle, displaceagainst just about every other sphere of arts, finishand the media, such young-bearing(prenominal)underrepresentation is unsurprising, if nonexpected.
Expected, not accepted.
And so it was that, exaltby the Guardian’s recent infographic “The Gender Balance of UK Literary Culture’ and apprisedby her own experiences as a subscriber, author Kathryn Heyman emailed the LRB to shewher concerns.
In a searing exchange, reproduced on her blog, Heyman informed the publication that she had deliberately leave outto renew her subscription because ‘based on the tedious regularity with which you ignore female writers and female reviewers, I have to assume that my lady-money is not incurin the man-cave of the LRB’.
Heyman concluded her email with this entreaty: ‘If at nearacmeyou choose to step into the terrifying world of gender equality, do let us know’.
‘Paul’ of the LRB responded to Heyman’s witty excoriation in legal injuryso blandly evasive he seemed to disprove the guessimplicit in his employer’s publishing practices: that women don’t write as well, or have as much of worth to say, as men.
Paul suggested the reasons for the underrepresentation of women were ‘complicated; actually, as complicated as it gets….despite the distress it causes us…the efforts we’ve made to change the federal agencyhave so far been unsuccessful”.
This response was depressingly resoundingof the Today programme, whose assertion that they were unable to find any female experts to discuss breast cancer was swiftly countered and led to the cosmeaof the expert database, The Women’s Room.
Similarly, what amounted to a linguistic shrug of the shoulders from the LRB, led Kathryn Heyman and others to figurejust how leadenthe publication was trying to redress its cavernousgender disparity and whether its ‘complicated’ reasons for this disparity held any weight.
The LRB’s defence, such as it was, seemed to hinge on a fallacy: that ‘more menactivelyset aboutto be published’.
A moot point when the journal goes on to earmarkto Heyman that ‘the vast majority of pieces that we carry atomic number 18commissioned by the editors’.
The suggestion that more custodyseek to be published, andsharppitch their work, is a regular facet of the conversations and arguments concerning representation in literary journals.
The argument that men get on in life and are better represented by uprightnessof the fact they are emboldened to come right extinctand ask for it is essentialising nonsense. This ‘masculine overconfidence’ – pitching reviews, asking for pay rises and snaffling tout ensemblethe promotions – is presumptivelytaking place eyepatchwomen are tittering commodetheir fans and squeaking ‘I couldn’t possibly’.
The LRB seem fully on board with the freethat women’s innate meekness is to blame for their underrepresentation, tweeting to some vocal detractors ‘why not email us your writing samples? Men do all the time’.
Sure they do. That’s definitely the only reason you regularly ignore halfthe population.
It’s obviously nothing to do with systemic sexism and the privileging of masculinity.
And even if women did upriseemailing writing samples in their thousands, the LRB would still continue, presumably, to commission most of its articles.
Which brings us back round nicely to the role of the LRB.
As Danielle Pafunda of Vida explains ’historically, an editor’s job has been to actively engage writers, to search out the new, bring the under-acknowledged into the light’.
Surely then, the logic goes, the LRB just need to commission more women.
They’re not actually hard to find.
Indeed, Heyman gave the journal a good starting point when she published a list of ‘eminent, established [female] writers and academics’ which was, by her own admission, ‘incomplete’ and ‘drawn unneuroticfrom a five minute conversation’.
For Books’ Sake also waded in, emailing the LRB with offers of supporterin finding these elusive female writers, while makethe astute point that ‘to us, the issue doesn’t seem that complicated at all. We feature women writers on a daily basis, unpaid, alongside ourfull-timejobs. Surely LRB, with all its influence and resources, should be able to do the same?’
This statement, perhaps more than anything, exposes the half-heartedness of the LRB’s alleged commitment to the issue of gender equality.
It seems as if the English Literature students’ vision of the whisky-soaked, middle class, university betterand hugely masculine literary ‘establishment’ has not changed all that much.
These types of writers are all still here, writing novels, winning awards, representing the ‘art’ of fiction.
Yet although women write and checkthe majority of fiction, female writing is much less liable(predicate)to be canonised, to be reviewed and to be celebrated.
And, actually, it matters little how many women novelists and reviewers in that locationare if women are not publicised or setwith rigour and as capable of producing culturally relevant discourse.
Until this happens, and while the horribly gendered and diminishing marketing of female writers as some kind of ‘genre’ such as ‘chick-lit’ or ‘aga saga’ remains, credence go forthcontinue to be given to the lie that only men can write well, and write importantly.
Writer and critic Bidisha called the erasure and bewildermentof women from public life in this manner ‘cultural femicide’.
She’s right, so satisfystop waving Hilary Mantel in our faces as if the anomaly is enough to placate us.
Perhaps Paul and the LRB need a binder, or at least someone more practised in defending the indefensible.
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Materials taken from Womens Views on News
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