Let’s Put The Spotlight on Women Writing

by SheThePeople

I have always wondered if women writers across the world have similar challenges? The answer, an unequivocal yes. They face challenges in getting published, in marketing their books, in finding enough reviewers and enough seats at literary festivals. Gender equality in literary circles is far far from achieved.

The numbers haven’t been great for centuries, and it’s not getting any better now. When we started talking of women writers, we were criticised for ‘creating’ another layer of separation. But when we looked around where were the women? They were not there on literature festivals, where they predominantly get called as moderators for tokenism or a panel on sexism is inserted. Some of India’s most attended festivals were criticised for being gender lopsided.

Every where in the world women are left to claps as many male authors pick up the majority of prizes, festival slots, grants, awards and book deals.

1. Book Deals: India’s biggest book deals have been led by men. Women, even if they do strike a deal, just don’t even get reported enough. Worse, they just don’t get the big deals unfortunately. I don’t care if men are better negotiators and all that that comes with it. But are women being given the opportunity and access? No.
2. Recognition: An article that researched literary awards noted that for literary novels in the UK over the last decade had 94 male winners and only 64 women and that number too was 60 plus largely because the list included the Bailey’s Prize for Women. Am not surprised that we don’t even have these statistics for India. The UK numbers are a good indication for across the world today.
3. Presence: Look wide and around in India and more or less just few women on one festival will dominate all festivals. There is not enough initiative or effort in bringing diverse views and more kind of writing on the table. Political narratives and news-headline-friendly authors are the favourites. Although most of India’s literature festivals are powered by women, there is not always enough female writing in focus.
4. Genres: We have such little diversity in genre of female writings. Science fiction, speculative fiction, self help, biographies, erotica, horror, business and more — are totally absent from the radar of festivals.
5. Workshops: The most festivals we have, the fewer workshops one finds. At the Women Writers Fest, we saw packed audiences for a workshop in storytelling, in how to get published and so on. There is a complete dearth of opportunities and access to conversations on ‘how to’ as women look to explore all forms of writing.

As more women take to writing and more books get published, somewhere we need to review how this asymmetry is fixed. We need to see value of deals increase for women than simply the volume of books by them. And it’s probably high time the ecosystem starts looking at women writing differently and move inclusively.