On this International Women’s Day, celebrate by reading women

Exactly two years ago, in her March 8^th piece, which was an excerpt from her book on this subject, Mary Ann Sieghart took on the “literary gender gap” without taking any prisoners. Why is it, she wondered, that women read the work of male authors, but men are less likely to read women’s books? At the beginning of this year on this blog, I made a similar exhortation to readers: to support the future of evangelical scholarship in particular, you should make the effort to read more women. As a woman who writes books, I have a very obvious investment in this topic of late–and have been very grateful to see (anecdotally) that at least as many men as women have been reading my recent book! Still, there really is a “literary gender gap.” Here is a recent example.

An academic journal that I read and greatly respect recently published a Book Reviews section that included two reviews by women and twenty-one by men. Sure, we could say, maybe a lot of women simply turned down the opportunity to review in that issue; it might not be anyone’s fault. And yet, the books reviewed in that issue exhibited the same ratio: two of the books reviewed were by authored by women; twenty-one by men. I can tell you for a fact that this is not a publishing gap. This is a readership gap—which extends, clearly, to whose work gets reviewed, just as much as to who is asked to review.

And so, Sieghart’s reflection on this problem in the publishing world hits just as hard today as two years ago:

…think about the last five or ten books you’ve read, and count how many are by male and how many by female authors? If you’re a man and your tally is roughly 50:50, congratulations, you are very unusual. As the writer Grace Paley once said, “Women have always done men the favor of reading their work and men have not returned the favor.”

The first study to look at this was a little anecdotal, but still telling. Lisa Jardine and Annie Watkins of Queen Mary University interviewed a hundred academics, critics and writers about their fiction reading habits. Four out of five of the men they talked to said the last novel they had read was written by a man, whereas women were almost as likely to have read a novel by a male author as a female one. When asked which novel by a woman they had read most recently, a majority of men found it hard to recall or could not answer.

When asked to name the ‘most important’ novel by a woman written in the last two years, many men admitted defeat and confessed they had no idea. Female authors make up as much of the modern literary canon as male ones, so these men were reading only half the canon, while the women were sampling it all. Maybe the men assumed that novels by women weren’t as good, but how could they tell if they weren’t even reading them?

Please don’t get me wrong: I thoroughly enjoy the writing of male authors. I am, in fact, married to one–and the paperback edition of my absolute favorite of his books is now available to preorder, by the way. But the intellectual world of bibliophiles whose reading diet does not regularly include the work of women is greatly impoverished. I come to this conviction as an evangelical woman with complementarian theological views, but I know that this is one topic on which I am in full alignment with both egalitarian Christians and secular feminists, who have been quite outspoken on the need to support the scholarship of women and other groups traditionally under-represented in the publishing realm. But talk is cheap. I would like to see more people act by these convictions that they voice.

Of course, this problem is inherent even in the very question of who gets published. It extends beyond the realm of books: which magazines publish the essays of women, and which ones generally don’t? The editors of Current, by the way, had consciously worked to address this issue from the get-go—the Contributing Editors have, from the beginning of this little magazine, been an even 50/50. I don’t know of any other magazine that has such a balance, unless those directed specifically to women. As a Book Review Editor, I have reason to think about this from the reviews angle too. The two reviews at Current this week included a book by a male author reviewed by a female novelist, and a book by a female academic reviewed by a male academic historian. I do not generally sit and masterplan to achieve a perfect gender balance in the books selected for reviews and in the choice of reviewers. And yet, simply by choosing to review books that seem poised to be conversation-starters and by selecting as reviewers insightful thinkers whose views on these books will be of benefit, a pretty good balance organically results.

It seems fitting to conclude a piece like this one by making some recommendations for talented women writers who have recently published books, so here goes. This is a very subjective list of just ten–not because I only could think of ten, but because it’s a nice round number and gives an idea of the real abundance of intellectual riches in store!

Amanda McCrina — a talented author of historical fiction, who also writes regularly for Current, including this review of Andrey Kurkov’s latest novel (translated by Boris Dralyuk) just this week.

Jennifer Croft — a brilliant translator and novelist, who happens to be married to Boris Dralyuk. Her latest novel just came out this week, and that’s what I’m reading this weekend. If I am ignoring emails, you have been warned!

Sasha Vasilyuk — a gifted journalist, whose debut novel, Your Presence is Mandatory is coming next month, so you can preorder and be ready! I was privileged to read it early. It is VERY good, in that heartbreaking way that a novel involving Ukraine, the Holocaust, WWII, and Soviet life invariably must be.

Tara Isabella Burton — earlier this year, one of Current‘s Contributing Editors, Agnes Howard, reviewed Burton’s Self-Made. Coming next month is the review of Burton’s newest novel (and my favorite of her works yet), Here in Avalon, by another Current contributing editor, Christina Bieber Lake.

Agnes Howard — the author of this excellent book on the history of attitudes towards pregnancy (and see this interview).

Elissa Weichbrodt — a Current Contributing Editor, whose recent book, Redeeming Vision, won multiple awards, including from CT and TGC! Learn more about her work and read her essays here.

Shirley Mullen — a Current Contributing Editor, the bane of whose existence it still is to be recognized as a woman to do the first ___, but hopefully she will forgive this shoutout, especially as we are looking forward to her new book, coming next month!

Elizabeth Stice — without a doubt, the most prolific essayist I know, a Regular at the Arena blog here at Current, but also you can find her essays all over, from Mere Orthodoxy to Comment to Front Porch Republic, and more. And you should read her recent book on WWI!

Lucy S. R. Austen — we at Current love (this) Lucy! Seriously, if you haven’t read her CT Award-winning recent book on Elisabeth Elliot, you’re missing out.

Sabrina B. Little — an ultra-marathoner and philosopher, who just published a book on the virtues of running! I’m highly intrigued, and it’s on my list. Also, who wants to review it for Current?

Okay, I’m going to cheat, sort of, and mention one more writer, whose book doesn’t have a release date scheduled yet, but a reliable source has read the first draft and tells me this is really, really good: historian Molly Worthen has a new book that is currently in its final stages of revision–on charisma! Here is a small preview of this project, and here’s another taste.