Elizabeth Strout warns us of the dangers of women writers dominating fiction in her interview with Bryan Appleyard in a recent edition of The Sunday Times (24/10/21). Her concern is that the world of published fiction books “is becoming too narrow” because in 2020, 57% of hardback and 62% of paperback fiction books were authored by women. (Incidentally, the numbers have flipped from 2000 when the picture was the reverse). Strout worries that not enough men are writing or reading fiction. Reading her interview got me wondering whether there was indeed cause for concern. If we take a short-term, equality-based view of the gender composition of fiction authors, then this snapshot does indeed point to a somewhat unequal representation of men vs. women in favour of the latter. However, does this analysis represent a fair lens through which to view matters? Should we apply an equality or an equity lens? In other words, should we worry about ensuring gender parity among fiction writers or focus on the fact that systemically under-represented voices – of which most are women’s, especially women of colour’s - are finally being heard?
Once I apply an equitable lens, any signs of possible concern dissipate immediately. For whatever the figures in 2020, when we look at the whole corpus of fiction books, we quickly realise how miniscule women’s presence is in an ocean of male authors. Therefore, if we are concerned with the equitable expression of women’s previously muted voices, we can safely conclude that 2020 offered a perfectly fair gender distribution of fiction authors. For too many centuries women have not had the opportunity to express their voices as fiction writers nearly as frequently or as freely as men. And they still comprise the minority of non-fiction authors. If anything, the very premise of Elizabeth Strout’s concern exposes how deeply gendered our societies are and how little tolerance there is for a situation in which men are under-represented and women over-represented as a way of creating a more equitable world.
When we broaden the lens to incorporate the wider cultural landscape, an even less equitable picture comes into focus. Across the media sector, women are severely marginalised as writers, producers, directors and protagonists. For example, in 2018-19 only 19% of the producers of the top 100 Hollywood highest-grossing films/series were women, the figure rising to 39% for Netflix movies/series. Even worse: in the same year, women constituted just 8% of directors of the top 100 highest-grossing Hollywood films/series and 23% of directors on Netflix. The figures for women writers are equally dismal with 17% of writers of the top 100 highest-grossing Hollywood films/series and 25% of Netflix’s being women. According to UN Women’s “Gender without Borders” study of 120 global films in 11 countries, only 10% of films had a gender-balanced cast. The remaining 90% were skewed towards men.
Despite supposedly endorsing gender equality, we live in universally biased societies that favour men. So much so that according to the 2021 World Values survey almost a quarter of women globally (23%) and nearly a third of men (29%) still believe that there are situations in which “it is justifiable for a man to beat his wife”.
Given the serious deficit of female perspectives in the world of culture and entertainment today, Elizabeth Strout’s concern about the world of fiction becoming too narrow is nothing short of preposterous. The fact that 62% of fiction authors in 2020 were women can only be a cause for celebration. It reveals a much-needed female-driven tapestry of storytelling that is being embroidered by more ethnically diverse authors such as Candice Carty-Williams and Bernardine Evaristo, whose narratives would never previously have been woven into the story at all.
