Emily Rhodes

Girls’ own

We still need a women’s prize for fiction

Everyone was so busy celebrating Hilary Mantel’s second Booker Prize victory last week that it was easy to overlook the announcement that another of our literary prizes has been saved from extinction. The Orange Prize had lost its sponsor — but has been rescued by a group of women sponsors, including Cherie Blair. It ought to be a matter of rejoicing — but the notion of a women-only prize is still deeply contentious.

The usual complaint is that a prize for literature by women is patronising, outdated, and isn’t fair to men. Despite the fact that pretty much every prize discriminates against something in its entry requirements — be that nationality, age or genre — none seems to generate quite as much fuss as this one.

On the face of it, of course it is unfair that there is a women’s prize for fiction when there isn’t one for men — this argument is lent more weight by Mantel’s Booker successes (though this is only the 16th year the Booker has been awarded to a woman, compared with the 30 times it has been won by a man). But any qualms should evaporate on looking at the imbalance of the wider literary world, which is so tilted in favour of men.

Firstly, the way books are packaged is incredibly sexist. Novels by women tend to be priced lower than novels by men. More novels by women appear only in paperback, whereas novels by men are more likely to have a hardback edition too. And novels by women often — however serious the content — have covers trussed up in a gaudy manipulation of ‘feminine’, by which I mean an italicised title, usually pink, and a picture of a woman looking wistful. The packaging makes these novels look lowbrow.

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