Women Writers in a Man's World: a reply to Tara Moss

Yesterday Aussie crime writer Tara Moss wrote a blog about the Shekilda conference held last weekend in Melbourne. Her post repeated some pretty alarming statistics. These statistics, first quoted by the creators of the women's only "Stella" fiction prize, detail the marginalisation of women in the publishing industry. The comments generated by Moss's blog were stunning. Memorably, Moss was accused of "privileged whining". The attack against her didn't stop there. (Read the blog and comments here.)

I wanted to add a comment but, once I got started, ran out of space. Instead, I've put it here.

It took me years to realise that I had been educated to privilege men's writing over women's. Like a lot of girls educated in the seventies and eighties, I grew up reading a canon of "great literature" written by men (and, primarily, for men). At school we read almost exclusively male writers, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Keats, Dickens, Sophocles, Patrick White, Kenneth Slessor, AD Hope, Bruce Dawe and Ray Lawler. Our one woman author was Jane Austen (three different novels read successively in Years 10, 11 and 12).

At uni, the trend continued, though the number of women authors studied expanded to include Mary Shelley, the Brontes and Emily Dickinson, as well as modernists such as Djuna Barnes and HD. Most of my tutors were male, and most were influenced by the "great" (male) literary critics as FR Leavis and Northrope Frye, and later Barthes, Derrida and Raymond Williams. Without realising it, I was being educated into the view that "good" writing focused on something other than (what were then primarily) women's interests and concerns - relationships, domesticity, "feelings", the woman's point of view (except as rendered by "masters" like Henry James and DH Lawrence). Subject matter concerning women was regarded trivial, ephemeral, sloppy and sentimental. While it was obvious that literary fashions and tastes changed over time, "good" literature nevertheleess could be counted on to focus on concerns such as history, politics, spirituality, ironic views of the court and society, nature, adventure, women's duplicity, women's unavailability, women's shrewishness... Only when women writers wrote of such realms and did it well (or happened to be Jane Austen) were they deemed wothy of study. The exclusion of the majority of women authors wasn't deliberate: it was just a matter of “quality”. And there weren't really all that many women who wrote, were there? Not according to the literary histories.

This not-so-subtle indoctrination wasn't restricted to our appreciation of the great "classics" of literature, produced in an age when women weren't as educated as men. It was also at work in the formation of contemporary literary canons in the 80s and 90s. My chosen area of study was Australian poetry, but it took most of my PhD for me to realise that my choice of subject matter (the "new Australian poetry" of the 60s, 70s and 80s) was predicated on the values I'd absorbed through my male-dominated (in every sense) education. And, guess what? The majority of poets whose work I “chose” to study were men.

Yes, I'm privileged - I'm lucky to have *had* an education: but what kind of education was it? I had been educated to the point that I was unconsciously reproducing in my own reading "preference" a gender bias which meant that I actively contributed to the marginalisation of talented women poets of that time. These poets’ work was actively being written out of what was considered "worthy" or "valuable" in terms of literary history. Who by? By male editors of anthologies which disproportionately represented men over women, editors who unashamedly made their selections based on a seemingly value-neutral notion of "quality". (The publication of Kate Jennings' anthology of Australian women's poetry, Mother I'm Rooted, and later, the Penguin Anthology of Australian Women's Writing, showed there was no shortage of poetry written by women: but the majority of this work simply wasn't considered "good" enough to be included in the anthologies.)

"Sean", one of the commentators out on Moss's blog, pointed out that Anne Summers (and Jennings, among others) decried the marginalisation of women writers way back in the 70s. I conducted my research in the 90s and only gradually became aware of the problem; it was almost - but not quite - too late for my thesis: my final chapter was devoted to the "missing" women poets. 

Now it’s 2011 and we’re still having the same debate...

But things have changed. We have the internet, for one. It has helped to create a community of extremely talented and articulate Australian women who are able to identify and question their own biases, who have acknowledged and decried the lack of recognition given to Australian women writers, and are active in redressing the injustice in whatever way they can. In Moss's case, it's by repeating the statistics which so clearly demonstrate the injustice, and by showing grace and courage in not being cowed by critics who don’t – can’t? – know the depth and breadth of the injustices faced by many successive generations of Australian women writers.

As for the creation of the Stella prize exclusively for women's fiction, it may be that the "best" women writers will be judged according to an aesthetic which reflects the values of a dominant (presently male-dominated) culture; the prize may serve to make these women authors more visible, and attract for them the attention and rewards necessary to hold their own against comparative male writers; hopefully they’ll be feted and interviewed, invited to appear on festival panels, sell more books and survive. They'll provide the role model for younger women writers to aspire to. Or maybe an alternative aesthetic will gradually develop as women readers focus more of our attention on what and why we judge to be “great” in women’s writing. Perhaps we'll develop an aesthetic, collectively or individually, which better reflects the breadth and diversity of Australian women's lived experiences, culture and values.

Whatever happens, it will happen because women readers, critics, reviewers and writers take each other’s work seriously, and treat each other with the respect owed to professionals; it will be because we continue to develop and question the basis of our own tastes and preferences, as well as actively seek out writing by women which we can champion and enjoy. 

If some male reviewers, critics, judges and readers also find something of value in such works, great. If they don't, who cares?