Books, women, awards, lack of

Shortly after I posted “You Are What You Read” below, in which I humbly surveyed the extremely sexist nature of my bookshelf, I ran across this post, “Books About Women Don’t Win Big Awards” (via the Facebook group Binders Full of Women Writers) by Nicola Griffith (author of Hild, a title that got plunked on the femmeliterate to-read bookshelf about the minute it rolled off the press). In this post Griffith analyzes the contestants and winners of six big-name book awards and finds–surprise, surprise!–that women authors and women characters don’t have a very big slice of the prize-and-prestige pie. Here’s a brief example (taken from Griffith’s website):

But rather than simply wring hands or scold the publishing world for male-myopia, Griffith proposes an investigation. Let’s think about why this gender bias persists, she says, and moreover, let’s collect the data to get a better picture. Help count women’s voices, she says. Amen to that, sister, says femmeliterate, and signs up at once to help with the project. You can help, too, by contacting Griffith through her website and contributing your data to the mix. Women’s voices matter–what we have to read, what we have to say, what we want to happen with our literary world and our culture.