Chart by Nicola Griffith
Ah, numbers. They push our buttons, spur fights on Facebook, and help generate cool-looking charts that make us seem smarter than we are. Much trickier is extrapolating their meaning. Case in point: the chart you see here, created by novelist Nicola Griffith.
Griffith looked at the winners of six prominent fictions awards from 2000 to today, and discovered that books about women don’t garner many top awards. For example, in the past 15 years, no book about a woman has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize. (It was awarded to three books about both genders.) I decided to do a quick scan of Academy Award winners to see if cinema fared any better. I think you know the answer. Only two best-picture winners in the past 15 years have been about women: Chicago and Million Dollar Baby (both written and directed by men). If you go back further it doesn’t get any better–mostly worse.
So what do we take from this? Griffith’s analysis of her data was that women have “literary cooties,” saying, “Certainly the results argue for women’s perspectives being considered uninteresting or unworthy.” Or to quote one of my eloquent film school classmates,when he was asked about women in film: “Who gives a shit?”
Really, these numbers are the end product of a myriad of complicated factors: artistic, educational, and cultural norms and limitations that have been enforced and perpetuated over hundreds of years. I, for one, am a little hesitant to tackle that behemoth–no matter how interesting the data. But maybe if we each take a piece of the puzzle, it will be more manageable.
For example, what I can speak to with authority are my own bad writing habits and ineptitude. I’ve dabbled in writing screenplays, and I just finished my first book. But at heart, I am a short story writer who writes about strong, feisty women–usually overcoming some kind of issue or obstacle. No one was more surprised than I was when I turned my hand to writing my book, and struggled with my females characters. Beta readers kept saying things like, “I really feel like I know the two male characters, but I can’t quite get a read on your female.” Or, “I would love to see more interaction between your female character and her girlfriends.” I had to face a hard truth: I was marginalizing my own female characters. It was a lot easier to rely on cliches and stereotypes than it was to bring real depth to them.
That’s not surprising. We’ve been surrounded by men’s stories all of our lives. We’re used to the absence of female characters, or seeing shortcuts taken with them. Meanwhile, male characters leap off of pages and screens, strong and compelling. I am a product of all that I’ve seen and done, just as is every other writer. This is brought home to me every time my 7-year-old daughter asks me why there aren’t more female characters in her TV shows.
Still, I know that’s a vague generality, and not the whole truth. It took only the tiniest bit of soul searching to admit that I find women very complex. That’s why I both fear and adore them, and probably why I’m falling short when I write about them. I was the tomboy running around with the little boys in my neighborhood. In college, I was unfazed by being the only woman on the first floor of my dorm. (Having no brothers, that was the unfortunate year that I learned that men pee in the shower.) Don’t get me wrong: I have two amazing sisters that I love, and my female best friend can complete my sentences. But get me around more than two women at a time, and I go a little stupid. The politics among women are tricky, and the rules are numerous and unspoken. However, the rewards of engaging with other women are profound–camaraderie, support, shared experience and knowledge. And their stories are too damn good to ignore.
So, back to the drawing board I went on my book, to flesh out the ladies. If each of us does our part to tell women’s stories as authentically and vitally as we can, maybe the awards will follow. And if not, we ought to keep plugging away until they do.
Anonymous was a Woman (I guess out of desperation.)
Thank you for digging deeper and working to produce something that captures women in all of their beautiful complexity. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. I can’t wait to read what you come up with!
It’s much easier to unrnsdtaed when you put it that way!
I’m bothered to say that I feel economics is also a factor. While book sales might not be a consideration in winning an award, whether a book gets published or a movie made is dependent on if it will make money. So it’s not that women’s stories are uninteresting and unworthy, it’s just that those in charge assume they will not create the monstrous revenue expected these days. Therefore even though women have stared in blockbusters and 50 Shades proved women buy books, women’s stories must still be considered a risk. Hopefully as women continue to spend their money on female centered books, films and TV shows, they can show there is an audience out there craving it.