A long time ago I was under the impression that men and women had an equal opportunity when it came to writing books.
I used to say “The keyboard doesn’t know whether the person doing the typing is a man or a woman.” and then, whether the book is a bestseller or not, it depends on the market forces. If the book is good, it will sell, and if the book is not good, it won’t sell.
I was wrong.
Gender discrimination in the publishing word
Then I started learning otherwise.
I learned about the Catherine Nichols experiment.
The Catherine Nichols experiment is simply a novelist who was trying to get her book published.
She send a query letter to fifty literary agents. When she sent the letter and signed with her own name, she had her manuscript accepted two times.
Then she sent the same letter under the name “George Layer.” and lo and behold, her manuscript was accepted for review seventeen times.
Even the rejections she got under the name “George” were nicer, warmer, and more encouraging. You can read her story here.
Women using men’s name in order to sell their books
Of course, Catherine had a sense that using a man’s name may have better results. After all, that’s what women have been forced to do in the past and present in order to be published.
George Sands was Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin
George Eliot was Mary Ann Evans
Daniel Stern was Marie d’Agoult
Isak Dinesen was Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke
J. K. Rowling (author of Harry Potter) didn’t disclose her woman’s name.
Most of these women would not have succeeded if they would have used their own names.
Women have to do their domestic work before doing the writing
In “A Room of One’s Own” (Get it for free here) Virginia Woolf talks about income/gender inequality that prevents women from writing.
Consider the difference between Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway.
Morrison would get up at 4:00 am to write, then prepare lunch for her two sons, take them to school, go to work, pick up the kids, make dinner, put the kids to bed, and then continue writing until she would fall asleep.
On the other hand, Ernest Hemingway was also a father, but the mother took care of their son. Hemingway did his work from his house in Key West where he did his writing in a separate studio. Then in the evenings, he would go fishing.
The hurdles Toni Morrison had to overcome in contrast with Ernest Hemingway are incomparable.
Yes, with time, gender discrimination and inequality, implicit or explicit, is disappearing, but we still have a long way to go.
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