How appropriate that the title of this year’s winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction is How To Be Both. The extraordinary novel by Ali Smith, which touches on the way the world sees gender and how that has changed, is a timely springboard into a controversial debate within the literary world: do we still need women-only initiatives in the arts?
As a woman who cares deeply about gender equality and has a love of books, I have followed this debate and commentary very closely. This year in particular, the Baileys Prize has generated considerable publicity, which is of course the point, since it is designed to shine a light on great writing by women. However, it has also served to stir a debate around whether these awards are necessary, or whether they are patronising to women.
Writing in the New York Times, Zoe Heller explained her fear that that women-only prizes institutionalise women’s “second-class, junior league status”, while marking off women’s fiction as something “virtuous but fundamentally tedious.” Jan Dalley in the Financial Times also voiced concern that “gender-based special pleading could imply weakness in today’s world”.
On one hand, I completely understand the root of these sentiments. After all, we live in a world where significant progress has been made on gender equality in developed communities, allowing for a better representation and recognition of women’s contributions across the board. My 21-year-old son believes that his generation will naturally grow up with a different, positive view of women; a view which means that these sort of debates will no longer be necessary. I hope he’s right, but I don’t think we can count on it.
We now know that a more gender-balanced leadership team is better for business. Firms with more women enjoy 56% higher margins, according to McKinsey. Yet despite this, in the UK there are more men named John than women on FTSE 100 Boards and in the US, only 23 CEOs in the S&P 500 are female. Women have discovered that waiting for the world to do the right thing is not enough; that it’s not enough to have equal rights and demonstrable proof that gender balance benefits employers. We have found out the hard way that actively intervening is the only way to move towards true equality. Perhaps because in business we are used to taking action to achieve desirable outcomes, this no longer seems strange to me.
I am proud that 45% of our board members are women. The diversity that this creates ensures that there is not only a different conversation in the boardroom, but also a better conversation. And even more importantly, the impact this has on younger women in our organisation is enormous, giving them the confidence to say: “I can do that”.
It is important to remember that this debate isn’t about “better”. It’s about “equal”. And I believe that equal is better for everyone.
Which brings me back to the Baileys Prize. Women have held their own as writers for far longer than they have been visible in the business world, but there is still a persistent gender gap when it comes to reward and recognition. Women have consistently underperformed in prizes and are not accorded equal treatment by the media. The percentage of books written by women that are reviewed in major titles still stands at just 28%.
There is also a more subtle bias. Charlotte Bronte wrote more than 150 years ago, “to you I am neither man nor woman – I come before you as author only”. Yet in some ways nothing has changed. Eleanor Catton, the author of The Luminaries, which won the Booker prize, told the Guardian: “In my experience and that of a lot of women writers, all the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are … The interviews seldom engage with the woman as a serious thinker, a philosopher.”
I know that no prize can make people buy books. There is no ultimate substitute for the ability to write brilliantly. But as a marketing professional, I know that it’s not enough to have a great product, you must also place it enticingly in front of the right consumers. In the UK alone last year 20 new titles were published every hour. The changing nature of book retailing means that an increasingly limited number of these are easily visible to potential buyers, so to me the role of women-only prizes in drawing attention to great writing by women seems to be more important than ever.
Ali Smith’s How To Be Both and its focus on challenging gender norms may have won the coveted Women’s Prize this year, but the real beneficiaries are today’s female writers and the future generation of creative minds who need visible role models to inspire them with the confidence to pursue their passions and ability to say “I can do that”.
