Women Writers

Today, reading a list of "most reads" of the year, I realised what bothered me about the list. What has been bothering me about a lot of reading that I have been doing in the media lately.

It wasn't that there weren't as many women as men (the list I was reading was relatively well balanced, plus, I kind of expect that in the same way I expect more English-writing authors to be present in these lists), but the fact that whilst men dealt with pretty much any subject, women were limited (I hesitate to say relegated) to "women's interest topics", whether they be how beauty standards are enforced by the media, how women have it more difficult, how women are mistreated or abused, how women are raped, how women are not equal in academia (well, I lie, this topic has suspiciously been picked up by many men too, many of them defending how the issue doesn't really exist), etc. Occasionally, articles on fashion (but these don't make it to the most-read lists) or on decoration or on flexible working (although, again, this is too often portrayed as a "women's interest topic"). In any case, it worries me that we see women authors as only worthy of producing content about women.

The above sentence may sound awful: what? Aren't women worth writing about? Of course they are. As much as anyone else. But when women's issues are dealt with as a side topic, instead of being dealt with as a normal topic, when women are asked to write about women but not given other assignments (such as writing about finance, or politics, or airplane tragedies, which also involve women but which for some reason are mostly reported on by men) the message being sent is this: women are only important to women, and women are not capable of doing anything else than reporting on or for women. Both of these assumptions are horribly detrimental.

Part of me wants to think that part of the reason for this occurring is that women are more interested in themselves than men are; that women write about women because men won't and because women's problems need to be made visible. However this is of little help. I want to write about women, and I want women and men to write about women. But not in exclusion. Not just because we are women and so need some different treatment. I want people to write about women because women are human. And I want both men and women to write about women because I want both women and men to write about men. I want to be able to gain insight into the world through other people's views and experiences and I don't think this is possible while we pigeonhole "women for women and people for men".

If I believed that there were no differences between men and women this wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter that only men described the world because they would do it the same way women do. But I don't believe this. I believe that men and women are different, that individuals are different and that insights into the world should be gained through both. As a woman there are things that matter to me that men don't think about as much (rape, for example, or the wage gap), but this doesn't mean that I only want women's opinions on these topics. It also doesn't mean that I want women to only talk about these topics.

I've always wanted to be a writer. This is why I've been writing ever since I can remember and why I have a blog and more notebooks than I can count full of stories and articles and reviews. I love writing. Never before did I think that I would be limited in what I might want to write about depending on my gender. And I won't be. But I will be limited in what I can publish apparently.

All I'm saying is, it's not just about numbers. It's also about content. I've never been a fan of quotas or preferential treatment for women, but until such a day when "women's interest" stories stop being "women's interest" and I stop seeing a huge bias in journalists' genders depending on the topic I suspect I won't be able to trust most media outlets.

(By the way, I love reading women's interest stories, but not because they are women's interests. Perhaps because they have a harder time getting published or perhaps because they have a harder time being heard, women who write about women's issues are not only beautiful writers but incredibly good researchers with flawless logic. I don't always agree with everything they say, but I read them because they write quality, and I will read them if they decide to write about politics or finance or economy or poverty or class mobility or anything else they want to write about because they are brilliant. And because in the end, all issues are women's issues, because we're all human.)