- What if half the population subconsciously thought
that hearing stories from the other half
just wasn't for them?
Sounds quite insulating,
but it seems to be the case with books today.
- Women will read, roughly 50/50 books written by men
and books written by women,
whereas for men, the ratio is more like 80/20.
So they'll read four books by a man
for every book by a woman.
- Ouch.
I really thought we were past all that,
that we'd left the need to disguise gender
back in the 19th century with George Eliot, yeah, a woman,
and the Bronte sisters others all doubling in pseudonyms.
Mary Ann Sieghart, who we just heard from,
considered publishing under M.A.
And of the best-selling authors today,
who has the most men reading?
- The writer with the most men,
with the highest ratio of men, was L.J. Ross.
- L.J. is killing it.
And we'll never know if she'd be killing it as much
with her male readership if she were writing under Louise,
but let's just being L.J. might not hurt.
And it's not just fiction
where female writers have a smaller audience.
In 2021, only 33% of all authors
on the New York Times
non-fiction best seller lists were women.
Makes me feel a bit weird
to think that facts are somehow a man thing.
And it's not just about who's telling the story,
it's about whose story it is too.
Those include memoirs.
So that means we're still more interested
in reading the stories of great men than great women.
And to quote Mary Ann, men are-
- Narrowing their empathy and their understanding
of what it is to be human.
Not just male, but human.
- So, what can we do?
Well, author E.B. Bartels, who is E.B. to her friends,
as well as being conveniently gender-neutral,
set up a cracking column called "Non-Fiction by Non-Men",
in which she interviews some great authors
who are women, trans, and non-binary.
- The vast majority of writers
that I had read in grad school
were white cis men, often dead.
And I love a lot of these authors,
I love George Orwell, I love E.B. White,
I love Montaigne, Samuel Johnson,
but I also was thinking
there are so many more people out there writing non-fiction,
in particular there are cis women,
trans women, non-binary folks,
and so many people of color and queer writers
and I've wanted to do something
that kinda featured these writers
and kinda gave them more of a platform.
(electronic music)
- And these recommendations are needed!
E.B. is trying to counteract
a lot of men recommending men.
- The New York Times has a column called "By the Book",
where famous authors recommend other books.
The men when they were interviewed,
again, it's the same ratio,
recommended four books by men for every one book by a woman
and half the men didn't recommend any books by women at all.
- We should pause here because it is worth saying
it's not that men don't enjoy books by women.
In fact, according to Goodreads,
on average, men rate books by women at 3.9,
compared to rating books by men at 3.8.
So we can safely assume
that there are lots of great books by women
just waiting to make it into the hands and ears
of more people.
- I think it's important to be aware of who you're reading
'cause I think it's just really easy
to kind of default to what's on the best seller lists
or what people you know are recommending.
- I have really noticed if you go into a bookshop
and you look on the smart thinking shelves,
there are very few books by women.
And you think, hang on a minute,
there's lots of really smart books by women.
Caroline Criado Perez's "Invisible Women".
Mary Beard "Women & Power".
Camilla Cavendish has written a great book about longevity.
Haven't seen my book on the smart thinking shelves.
And you think why does smart thinking have to be male?
- And if you're a write who's Black,
indigenous, or a person of color,
you're gonna have had an even harder slog
to get yourself known.
- Bernadine Evaristo, who eventually won the Booker Prize
in 2019 for "Girl, Woman, Other", fantastic novel,
but she was I think 60 or something like that
when she won it and her work had really not been recognized
until she was in her late fifties.
- Thankfully, literary prizes are now noticing
that women write brilliant things.
And the Women's Prize for Fiction,
who've been celebrating women's literature since 1996,
included the first trans women on their long list in 2021.
So there is some hope in all of this.
- In general, the literary world is becoming more aware
of what it was lacking for a really long time,
so I do feel hopeful.
I think we still have a long way to go,
but I think we're on the right path.
- And what's super great
is that changing who we're personally reading
couldn't be easier.
When you go to pick up a book, you just double check
if you've assumed that it's not for you
based on gender, race, or anything else
and maybe give it a go.
I'm pretty sure that some gems await.
(upbeat soul music)