Written by Rubie Barker
ÔÇ£The UKÔÇÖs most prestigious annual book award celebrating & honouring fiction written by womenÔÇØ – thatÔÇÖs how the Women’s Prize for Fiction describes itself on its website. For 27 years, the award has been a respected and prestigious award in the world of fiction and publishing, with anticipation surrounding the longlist, shortlist and winner each year. Yet in recent years there have been accusations of misandry and claims that the prize conforms to the strict idea that gender is something binary. Questions have been asked about the need for the prize. Is gender equality still an issue in fiction and publishing? Is the prize exclusionary in itself? And in 2022, should we still be focusing on gender when it comes to awards?
The award was established in the 1990s, after the 1991 Booker Prize shortlist did not feature any women, even though around 60% of novels published that year were by female authors. Its aims were, and still are, to recognise the works of fiction that women produce worldwide every year, ÔÇ£regardless of their age, race, nationality or background.ÔÇØ The prize has been judged by a panel of women for over 25 years, in order to celebrate women as critics as well as writers.
However, tension has grown in recent years. While the prize aims to appreciate literature from all ages, races, nationalities and backgrounds, it continues to highlight inequality in the literary world by singling out women as the sole recipients of the prize.
Some have argued that the need for the WomenÔÇÖs Prize has served its purpose in encouraging academia to take female authors seriously. In 2019 Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo shared the Booker prize for The Testaments and Girl, Woman, Other respectively. Kristina Murkett of the Spectator wrote that ÔÇ£Literature, it seems, is one of the few areas in which women do not need a leg-up. Women dominate the literary market: they write more books than men, they read more books than men.ÔÇØ Yet since the Booker Prize was first awarded in 1969 18 of the winners have been men compared with 35 women.
In 2020 the WomenÔÇÖs Prize announced George Eliot as one of 25 authors whose works would be re-published under their real names, as part of the ÔÇ£Reclaim Her NameÔÇØ campaign. Middlemarch was published with Mary Ann Edwards as the author as well as Keynotes by Mary Bright and many more. The campaign highlighted the way in which historically women have not been recognised for their work, and reiterated the work that the WomenÔÇÖs Prize does.
In a world where conversations around gender, sex, and the binary are more topical than ever, it is likely that conversations such as this one will continue. Additionally, the WomenÔÇÖs Prize will surely have to confront the requirements of the award, acknowledging the idea that not everyone identifies as a woman or a man.
I donÔÇÖt think this means that the place for the prize has been lost, though. The prize addresses the long-term discrimination and struggles of women in literature. Virginia Woolf wrote in the 1920s that ÔÇ£a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fictionÔÇØ. The UK has changed a lot since then, but the idea of a separate space for women in literature has not. Almost 100 years later, Women’s literature still needs to be appreciated, to be encouraged, and to be valued; the unique challenges of womanhood still need to be explored. The fight for gender equality rages on, and the work the Women’s Prize for Fiction carries out is certainly not done.
