Earlier this week, soon after dawn had broken over central London, I joined a boisterous crowd for breakfast and the 2016 Comment Awards. Now it is probably fair to say that 8am rarely presents journalists at their sparkling best, but the MC, Peter York, was witty; the winners’ speeches were Twitter-style in their brevity, and we were within tantalising reach of the end, when a mini-controversy struck. The penultimate winner turned down her award.
We quickly passed on to the last winner, but the rejection marked quite a departure. These awards, bestowed by the networking group Editorial Intelligence and now in their eighth year, recognise journalists who write what we used to call op-eds, and now call opinion pieces. They are those articles which take a view and have readers quietly nodding in agreement or – more likely – yelling at the newspaper or the screen and frantically scrolling to the bottom to add their dissent “below the line”.
The genre has grown in recent years, and arguably become shriller as publications jostle to be heard. In this case, though, the dissent was very much above the line and came from the writer herself. Janice Turner of the Times sent apologies for her absence, but also a message saying “thanks, but no thanks”. She rejected the whole premise of the prize, which was a category called Women’s Voice.
As one of those shortlisted for the same award, I shared her view. Indeed, while feeling gratified to make the final cut for anything, I felt, frankly, a bit demeaned by being exiled to Women’s Voice. Sad to say, that provides men with the perfect excuse to disregard anything you say.
The defence from Editorial Intelligence (whose founder and CEO is the – female – networker supreme Julia Hobsbawm) was essentially that women had a distinctive voice that warranted its own award. But for me, that actually made things worse. I don’t think of myself as writing in a particularly “women’s” voice, or expressing a particularly “women’s” view. I regard myself – too flatteringly, perhaps – as a privileged participant in a national, sometimes international, conversation, on a par with other participants, including men.
My views may be formed and informed by my experience as a woman. But many other experiences come in, too: living abroad, speaking languages, past assignments, watching history, family … When I write about British politics or foreign affairs, do I take an identifiably women’s view? What would constitute a Women’s voice on these subjects?
So why did the 2016 Comment awards suddenly sprout a Woman’s Voice category? I fear it was embarrassment at the relatively small number of female winners, which is an affliction of journalism prizes generally, and an attempt to redress the balance by ensuring – rather like all-women shortlists for MPs – that a woman could win.
The headline tally at this year’s awards was, in fact, not too terrible: eight of the 17 individual winners were women. But the shortlists were heavily male and the most mainstream awards, as usual – including columnist, comment piece and commentariat of the year – went to the men.
And this is not really good enough in this day and age, is it? So it might be worth asking why, whether it really matters, and what – beyond an all-woman shortlist – can be done about it.
One reason for the preponderance of male winners in mainstream categories might simply be that there are more men covering what might be called hard news, reporting, editing – and commenting. But is this because women prefer other branches of journalism, or is it because the “hard stuff” and the grand subjects are – still – widely considered the preserve of men?
Personally, I have run a mile over the years, as have many female colleagues, to avoid being pigeonholed by gender. But a problem is that women’s versatility is penalised. So long as there are women’s pages, women’s websites and the rest, you will find yourself pushed to write on subjects that men are deemed unequipped to do. So long as “men’s issues” are not generally covered in the same way, that imbalance will remain, and you have to make yourself pretty difficult to resist.
As for comment specifically, there was a time when it was probably harder than it is now to find women other than professional campaigners who were prepared to express a forceful opinion in print. As Comment editor at the Independent in the mid-1990s, I tried to persuade specialist reporters to write op-eds, but many women preferred to report rather than comment. I sense that female writers have fewer inhibitions now, though the insults and the threats that come via social media may deter some. A thick skin is certainly a precondition for writing comment today.
The relatively small number of women commissioned to write mainstream comment pieces might be one reason for the imbalance in awards. Another may be judges’ expectations of what constitutes mainstream comment. But the lack of female winners in this field matters because it reinforces the idea that women can’t or won’t be as successful commentators as men. It also matters because, while we non-winners may scorn awards, they carry additional benefits – such as enhanced reputation, a bargaining chip for higher pay, more freedom to choose your subjects – that currently go disproportionately to men.
As to what can be done, I don’t think separate awards is the way, unless there is a Men’s Voice and the categories are more clearly defined. The way into published writing of all sorts is more open, thanks to the internet, than it has ever been, and the trend in awards for creative writing – the controversy surrounding the Baileys (formerly Orange) award, for instance – is away from categorisation by gender.
I do think that judges might take too narrow a view of what constitutes a mainstream opinion piece, or be swayed by an established byline; one award seems too often to beget another. I think, too, that to be relevant, journalism has to be – in words that now sound antique – an equal-opportunity employer. Then again, as a non-winner – even in a category from which half the competition was excluded – I would perhaps be wiser not to comment.
