Any aspiring writers who set their sights on claiming some of the biggest prizes in the literary world can maximise their chances of winning by ignoring half the Earth’s population. Research carried out by novelist Nicola Griffith has shown that if a book is written about women or from a female perspective, it’s statistically far less likely to receive plaudits from the literary community.
Novelist Nicola Griffith analysed the results from a selection of major book awards since the beginning of the 21st century, separating them into categories focusing on the gender of the author, lead characters, and whose stories were being told in the book. In her blog post about it, Griffith says:
When women win literary awards for fiction it’s usually for writing from a male perspective and/or about men. The more prestigious the award, the more likely the subject of the narrative will be male.
Griffith’s research, as laid in these pie charts for the Pulitzer and Man Booker Prizes, reveals how skewered the awards are to rewarding male-centric stories:
While women’s stories are being marginalised, girls’ stories show some improvement; when it came to the Newbery Medal, which is one of the most prestigious plaudits awarded to writers of ‘Young Adult’ fiction, the results showed a stronger performance for female-centred novels by male and female authors.
“Girls, then, are interesting. Girls count,” Griffith writes in her blog.
[All Images: NicolaGriffith]
