French author Annie Ernaux is only the 17th woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature announced recently. Women constitute only 13.6% of the 118 chosen so far for the Prize presented by the Swedish foundation.
Why there are fewer women Nobel prize winners is a topic of discussion every year since its inception over a century ago. And for literature, there are some unique reasons.
Women write too, but books on men sell more…
There is no doubt that women have found a voice with their books. But books with male protagonists sell more. SuperSummary, a company that provides study guides for fiction and nonfiction, explored gender bias in a study “Strong Man; Beautiful Woman.” The study found that books with male protagonists sold 10 million copies more than the ones with female characters, on average. A report in book riot discussing the study also said that male authors presented more male characters. The report added that female authors chose female characters, though over a quarter of those bestselling books by women writers did feature male characters.
Nobel committee explains….
A few years ago, when the question of fewer women Nobel laureates arose, the committee said that women were part of the selection process, ruling out bias. The committee pointed out that hindrances within the fields for women were more till some decades ago and resulted in a skewed gender ratio of the pool from which the awardees were chosen. While the explanation was for all categories, women writers face the hurdle of getting typecast into plots and subjects specific to women’s writing.
An interesting observation is that some women have chosen gender-agnostic names even as they have made it big in the field, like JK Rowling. The inherent part of the problem is that male readers don’t prefer reading women’s works. Even a bestselling author like Hilary Mantel garnered only 34% male readership, according to reports.
Women have crossed many hurdles in the field of publishing from a time when a brilliant writer like Jane Austen struggled to get published or had to choose anonymity because it wasn’t ‘ladylike’ to pursue a career in writing.
