So far this semester, I have been exploring issues of sexuality, gender, and race on this website. To do this, I’ve mostly been highlighting and reading about authors that aren’t straight white men and I’ve found some really incredible authors, but the authors featured in these posts are not an accurate representation of SF writers as a whole. I just read these two articles about the lack of women writers in SF:
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2013/08/speculative-fiction-has-sexism-problem/312355/
I was struck by a few points. The data speak for themselves regarding the numbers of women who are nominated for awards in SF, but one thing that the stood out to me was a quote from Liz Williams who is a judge for the Clarke award:
“As a feminist, I am opposed to including women writers in shortlists just because they are female: the work has got to hold its own in its field: we can discuss whether that field is a level one or not, but when you’re judging a work, you’re obliged to deal with what you’ve got, and to me, that means regardless of any ideological criteria.”
I agree with Williams: the definition of a feminist is believing in equality. And I don’t want women to get special privileges or be considered for awards just because they are women. I definitely don’t want that. But, that doesn’t mean we can ignore the structural issues that still lead to the same data. If we are treating women SF authors equal to men in awards noms (as Williams claims), then why are the numbers so lopsided? There has to be an underlying cause. As we would say in the sciences, the proportions are significantly different from 50:50. I think the issues are endless: women’s works are being cast aside as fantasy, women authors are turning to other genres because they see the way women are treated in SF, women are having a hard time getting published… the list goes on.
I guess I don’t know the solution, but I do know that I want future generations not to have to specifically seek out women SF authors. Yes, there are a handful of great ones (Le Guin, Butler, Russ), but these authors should not be highlighted because they are women. They should be praised as some of the greatest SF authors of all time regardless. To me, it’s just an added benefit that they are women. I hope the next generation of SF writers is more equally distributed, but to make that happen structural change needs to occur.
Great post. Luckily, there are more and women writers in SF, and more women critics, and directors; and more diversity in general in sf. Recently, the author Jeanette Ng protested to the name of the “Campbell” award, given his misogyny. It is now called the Astounding Award. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astounding_Award_for_Best_New_Writer. and https://medium.com/@nettlefish/john-w-campbell-for-whom-this-award-was-named-was-a-fascist-f693323d3293. In the past, there was a huge controversy over gender and race in the Hugo Awards (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Puppies)