Please sponsor my 5k swim coming up in April and help support Marie Curie Cancer Care, an organisation which provides home nursing care to people with terminal illnesses.

While I’m always glad to see men willing to write about gender discrimination, and I agree with some of his conclusions, I think Brian Schofield, in his recent Guardian Books blog post, misses a few key points. Again, I am glad and grateful that, after learning that his book, Selling Your Father’s Bones, had been shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, he took a moment to look around and wonder why everyone on that short list was male. The process he follows to find the answer, however, is flawed. He argues against gender bias in the judging on the basis that

Women held the majority vote on the John Llewellyn Rhys panel and the chairpersonship of the Guardian prize – and it’s surely a testament to how very seriously the judges took their responsibility that they didn’t hastily re-shuffle the pack when they spotted the chromosome imbalance of their final selections.

There are two problems with this. First, women, like men, have been raised in a sexist society and so are perfectly capable of acting with gender bias; it’s called internalized sexism. In the US, we even have groups of women dedicated to sexism (see “Concerned Women for America”, for example). Alice Waugh makes this point more colorfully:

Since when did women not discriminate against women? I know a couple of female editors who much prefer to commission men, fearing that women appeal only to their sisters while men write for a broader audience. In practice, this means that if a woman wants to write a critical article about prostitution it’s boring; if a man produces a piece on Moscow lap-dancers it’s erudite, urbane and witty. Couldn’t that angst extend to judges?

Second, the notion that failing to “re-shuffle the pack” when they saw that all the finalists were men shows “how very seriously [they] took their responsibility” is debatable. Surely a responsible judge made aware of a possible bias should make some effort to counteract it.

Schofield goes on to argue that it isn’t likely that publishing houses show bias in their nominating processes since

publishing houses by and large nominate every possible book for every conceivable prize they have even the slightest chance of winning. That scattergun knows no bias.

Except, of course, that anywhere a line is a drawn between what is and isn’t good enough, sexism can enter the equation. There’s the possibility of a vicious circle here, too: women win fewer awards, which makes publishers less likely to see books by women as having a chance at winning, which makes women win fewer awards . . .

Despite those mistakes, what he finally comes to see as a possible answer is something that I suspect is quite valid and equally true on this side of the Atlantic:

It’s pretty clear that our culture as a whole is still more comfortable in the company of brainy, opinionated men than women . . . Publishing may once have been a rebellious outpost against this hegemony, but my feeling is that as the industry has steadily lost confidence in the British public’s capacity for seriousness, the pressure to move away from the heavy stuff has fallen more on female writers than male.

Following this, he lists genres that women are encouraged to write and that are apparently lacking in substance and, in so doing, misses another key point: whether a genre is considered “meaty” or not has a lot to do with whether it is considered gendered. Indeed, when a man crosses over to a genre considered female or feminine, he often wins praise. “Misery memoirs” offer a prime example, as I seem to remember Angela’s Ashes winning quite a few awards.

Finally, however, I do appreciate Schofield’s conclusion. After quoting a judge who believes gender is a non-issue, he states

I’d like to be sure. Because like most writers, I’m rabidly competitive – and true competitors can’t stand the thought of being handed an unfair advantage.

If more people thought that way, there would be a lot less discrimination in this world and Stealers fans would have been as vocal as Seahawks fans in complaining about the abysmal officiating in Super Bowl XL.

Related posts:

1. Oh Look, More Sexism on a Supposedly Progressive Website
2. Sexism & Art: No Surprise Here
3. My pain is not your literary device
4. Notes on Sweet: A Literary Confection
5. A Flawed Treatise on Flaws
6. Hunter S. Thompson and Gender Roles
7. Sex, Gender, and the Non-Elite Athlete
8. Are women writers now sexless?
9. Gender Across Borders
10. Female Chimps Keep Quiet About Sex Lives (Except When They’re Loud)

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.