Sexism in Publishing

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A scale comparing the two sexes, male and female[/caption]

Touched by a recent article by Catherine Nichols in The Guardian and doing a little research on previous cases, I decided to devote this article to sexism in the publishing business. Although it is a very controversial issue, doubts on this matter become less apparent as time goes by and as fights for equality in all professional and non-professional sectors are increasingly ignited.

To delve a bit further into sexism and the recently public frustration of Catherine Nichols, The Guardian unveils the story of her experiment, namely sending the same manuscript under, first, a female name, her own, and then a male, George. The responses that she received proved her point. More specifically, Catherine received eight times more responses under her male pseudonym than her female one. Inspired or not by her predecessor, Francis Prose, who investigated the alleged inferiority of women writers twenty years ago, Catherine, in her essay “Jezebel”, mentions that she sent the same pages and cover letter both as male and female to fifty agents from a different e-mail account. As a result, under her female name, she received two requests for her manuscript whereas under her pseudonym, George, that number increased to seventeen.

Apart from the number of responses, the comments that she received were equally diverse. As Catherine, she was told “beautiful writing, but the main character isn’t very plucky, is she?” As George, she was more accepted and treated more warmly with words such as “clever,” “well-constructed,” and “exciting” describing George’s writing.

At this point, it must be pointed out that expectations of women’s writing are equally high and looked down by both men and women in the publishing business, especially when one thinks that this sector is mostly dominated by women (editors, publishers, committee members). As Prose advocated in her own essay in 1998 “it’s not at all clear what it means to write ‘like a man’ or ‘like a woman,’ but perhaps it’s still taken for granted, often unconsciously and thus insidiously, that men write like men and women like women — or at least that they should. And perhaps it’s assumed that women writers will not write anything important — anything truly serious or necessary, revelatory or wise.”

To back this theory up, about a month ago, Joanne Harris, writer of the Chocolat trilogy, experienced the same discomforting situation when on a tour with three other male panellists. When her time came to be interviewed by a reporter in the audience, she said that she was only asked about EL James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. She, furthermore, claimed that no one asked the male writers such a question. In a recent magazine interview, Harris also revealed that she was asked how she is juggling motherhood and writing as well as being afraid of being fat. Apparently, male writers do not have to deal with such questions and issues. To quote her on the difference of the two genders in publishing and writing “no man in publishing is ever described as ‘juggling’ anything,” she said. “His work is art. Women’s work is a hobby.”

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