Women Writers Are Still Underappreciated

Last year, the Uruguayan author Cristina Peri Rossi won the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, an important award for Spanish-language writers. Rossi, who is known for her poetry, short stories, and novels, is the sixth woman to receive this recognition. Hers is an achievement worth celebrating not only because her work is worthy of such distinction but also because her victory marks another step toward closing the gender gap in recipients of this award: 40 men have received the Cervantes Prize since 1975.

This is hardly the only literary prize to have a distinct gender gap in awardees. Since the Nobel Prize for Literature was created in 1901, 15 women and 101 men have won. Only one female Latin American writer — Gabriela Mistral, a poet from Chile — received the prize, which she did in 1945.

When I see these numbers as a Latina writer myself, I feel frustrated but not surprised. Women’s voices have been, and continue to be, less recognized than their male peers, given that women still publish less than men — and those who do publish are generally taken less seriously. According to research led by Spain’s Ministry of Culture, women are the authors of around 36% of publications in the country, while men author 60%, and 4% are from authors who don’t identify their gender. A 2018 Financial Times analysis stated that “publishing houses worldwide still submit more books by male writers for literary prizes, and book reviews in major publications tended to highlight more books by men than by women.”

This is hardly a new problem, either. Historically, intellectual activities such as writing were monopolized by men. The anthropologist and columnist Carmen Geiler notes some of the reasons that prevented women from writing in this article, including care responsibilities (like double shifts of work inside and outside of the home) and fewer educational opportunities. “Women, in short, have less time to create, to accumulate knowledge, to discern and to open up opportunities to meditate on their own human conditions,” Geiler explains. As Virginia Woolf explained in her essay “A Room of One’s Own,” writers need independence, economic means, time, and space to write — things women have historically lacked.

We’ve only recently begun to learn about the relatively few women who had the time and opportunity to write throughout history. Those women who were able to write often published their work under pseudonyms, including the Brontë sisters: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne changed their names to Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell to publish without being questioned or ridiculed. Their most famous works were published in 1847 and became bestsellers soon after: Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s Agnes Grey. However, only three years later, their real names would become known after Charlotte published a “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell,” explaining they chose to use male pseudonyms so they wouldn’t be looked on with prejudice.

There are also doubts that some male authors completed their work alone; some believe F. Scott Fitzgerald plagiarized the work of his wife, Zelda, and a number of other male authors have been accused of similar actions.

Given this long history of being prevented from writing publicly at all, it’s unsurprising, though still disappointing, that women are still undervalued in the literary world. “It is true that we women entered literature late … how long do you think it has taken us to get this far?” said the author Gioconda Belli. “But we have arrived, and it is time that we are recognized for the immense quality and relevance that, without pettiness and with enthusiasm, the reading public recognizes.”