Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right - Why I’m far from happy with the Swindon Youth Festival of Literature’s author line-up

Although I’ve spent most of my time highlighting the under-representation of men in the world of children’s literature on this blog,  I’ve occasionally focussed on instances where the imbalance runs the other way. This morning I found out about another of those instances; it seems that only one of the sixteen children’s and YA authors appearing at this year’s Swindon Youth Festival of Literature’s author line-up is a woman.

You might think that – after all the fuss I’ve made about the under-representation of men – I’d be happy to see men being over-represented in this instance.  I am not. As my mother often told me, “two wrongs do not make a right”. As someone that has spent the last three years campaigning for more GENDER BALANCE in the world of children's literature, I’m no more happy to see women under-represented than I am to see men.

"Children’s books are  intended for readers of both sexes, so doesn’t it make sense for both sexes to be well represented in the authors appearing at the festival as well?"

To echo the arguments I’ve made repeatedly on this blog – I am not questioning the selection of any of the individual authors in the line-up; I’m sure that they are all very effective in engaging young readers of both sexes. What I am questioning is the appropriateness of the overall demographic. Children’s books are intended for readers of both sexes, so doesn’t it make sense for both sexes to be well represented in the authors appearing at a children's book festival?

I’m not aware of any hard data for this, but a couple of authors have told me that there is also a strong pro-male imbalance in author school visit bookings. Apparently schools sometimes justify this imbalance by saying that they have a particular problem with reluctant boy readers and so they tend to book male authors to compensate for the lack of adult male reader-role-models among school staff. A similar justification might be given for the dominance of male authors in the Swindon Festival programme.

The problem here is that we are attempting to counter the knock on-effect of one gender-imbalance by creating a second imbalance, when it would be far better to tackle the problem at source. UCAS head Mary Curnock Cook has been calling for years for positive action to address the lack of male teachers within UK schools. Earlier this year she commented that there has been a “deafening policy silence” in response to such calls. There are plenty of great initiatives (like the one featured in this video) to encourage girls into male-typical careers – why are there so few initiatives to encourage boys to become primary teachers, librarians, nurses or even stay-at-home-dads?

If we want to close the gender gaps in children’s reading for pleasure and children’s literacy, we need to make far more effort to encourage gender balance across the whole world of children’s literature, regardless of which gender is under-represented.

So come on Swindon Festival, let’s have an author line-up that reflects your intended audience next year!

Is a 'one way' attitude to gender balance hampering efforts to get boys reading?

Gender equality should not be a one way street

I’m aware that some people regard some of the arguments I’ve made on this blog as being anti-feminist. It’s a view I first addressed on this blog back in 2013 in relation to the belief that acknowledging innate sex differences in behaviour was anti-feminist.

The actor Emma Watson recently commented that, "If you stand for equality, then you’re a feminist." Whether you accept this or not comes down to how you define feminism. My dictionary defines it as “the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.” I support the equality of the sexes and recognise that in most contexts this means promoting women’s rights. Nevertheless, when I’m asked if I’m a feminist, I feel obliged to qualify my answer by saying that I’m an egalitarian feminist, because I think the principal of equality should override the principal of promoting women’s rights. Over last couple of years I’ve come up against several self-professed “feminists” who seem to interpret feminism as simply meaning promoting women’s rights regardless of the context. This group could be characterised as partisan feminists. When the actor and veteran human rights campaigner Susan Sarandon objected to being described as a feminist on the basis that it was an “old-fashioned”, “alienating” word, I suspect that she had this narrower, partisan interpretation of feminism in mind.

While a pro-female approach to gender equality is clearly appropriate for most contexts, I think children’s literature is one context where we need to recognise that we have to redress the balance in the opposite direction if we want children’s books to appeal equally to both sexes. Gender equality should not be a one way street!

Publishing journalist and Associate Editor of The Bookseller Porter Anderson agrees. Addressing the lack of gender balance in the recent shortlists for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in a Thought Catalog article earlier this year, he wrote:

What if the gender imbalance in the Waterstones shortlist released today gave us 15 books by men and only three by women? 

Would we hear any concerns voiced then? Well, of course we would. And rightly so. 

"What if we have confused the need for “gender balance” in our books culture with support for women over men?" Porter Anderson

Several points are important in the dialog that’s building in urgency among thoughtful, earnest members of the readership and of the publishing community about the trend highlighted by the Waterstones shortlist. 

In a nutshell, it’s this: What if we have confused the need for “gender balance” in our books culture with support for women over men?

“Balance,” after all, means balance. And while we might never achieve perfect equilibrium in almost any aspect of life or work, there seems to be a line of thinking in parts of the publishing industry today that interprets “balance” to mean support and applause for women and girls.

Anderson goes on to say this about the current children’s literature buzzword “diversity”:

Even the term “diversity” itself, when it comes to gender issues, tends to be confused with an automatic reference to female advancement. These terms are so readily weighted, often without our thinking about it. However much I and many others despise the stupid oppression of women by men for such an unspeakably large part of history, can moving forward by creating the opposing imbalance possibly be the answer? Of course not. 

Effects such as those seen in the Waterstones shortlist need not be “somebody’s fault.” Blame is not an issue here. I don’t think that anyone gets up in the morning in books publishing today and says to him or herself, “Here goes another great day of suppressing books by and for guys and promoting books by and for women.” 

But however unintended such constructs may be, their outcomes may be exacerbating a serious and deepening challenge: our men and boys aren’t reading as much as our women and girls.

As I've highlighted elsewhere, this gender imbalance extends well beyond children’s publishers and booksellers into other important gatekeeper groups such as teachers and children’s librarians. Mary Curnock Cook, chief of UCAS the UK Universities admissions service, has suggested that the lack of male teachers may be a result of a one way attitude to gender balance in the UK education system. Her views were quoted in an article in Times Higher Education last year:

Action over gender imbalances at university was “about women who are disadvantaged compared with men”, she said. “Why wouldn’t you set out to make it more socially acceptable for young men to go into nursing and teaching?” she asked. 

"I don’t see anything happening in education policy to tackle this issue." Mary Curnock Cook

“Maybe some of the issues we’ve got with male education would be improved by having more male primary and secondary teachers,” Ms Curnock Cook said. She added that boys being taught English literature in classes with a majority of girls and by female teachers “doesn’t always make for young men who love English literature”. “I don’t see anything happening in education policy to tackle this issue,” she said 

She made the broader point that there was a now a “huge sociological and widening participation issue” because women were so much more likely to apply to higher education than men.

When I set up this blog, I’d anticipated that some people would object to some of the solutions I’d suggested for addressing the lack of gender balance among publishers, teachers, librarians and picture-book-buyers. I hadn’t anticipated that quite so many people would reject the premise that this lack of gender balance was an issue that was worth addressing. I think this is a partisan response and I suspect that those same people would react very differently if women rather than men were being underrepresented.

Unless we’re prepared to recognise that gender balance ought to be as important to children’s literature as it is to areas such as science and engineering, we have little hope of closing the literacy gender gap. We have to start being proactive about engaging men in children’s literature in the same way that we are already proactive about engaging women in science and engineering. Sitting back and claiming that 'we have to accept that they’re just not as interested as the other sex are' is no excuse. We have to go out of our way to get them interested! 

Gender balancing the Waterstones Children's Book Prize: An open letter to James Daunt

Should the scarcity of men on Waterstones Children’s Book Prize shortlists be a cause for concern?

Following on from my comments last month about the conspicuous lack of gender balance in recent Waterstones Children Book Prize shortlists, I thought it was worth trying to encourage Waterstones to give some consideration to gender balance in the shortlisting and judging of future prizes. So I’ve written the following open letter to Waterstones CEO, James Daunt.

Clarification: In case it's not clear in the letter, I'm NOT suggesting that there should be an equal number of male and female authors and illustrators on future shortlists. I am suggesting that future shortlisting/judging should be done by a reasonably gender-balanced group of booksellers.

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Dear Mr Daunt

As a children’s author, I’d like to applaud Waterstones for helping to raise the profile of children’s literature through the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. When the shortlist for the 2015 prize was announced last month you said that, “children are our most valued customers here at Waterstones as we strive to nurture the next generation of readers.” I’m sure that the prize is helping to achieve this goal. However I’d like to suggest one way in which it might do this more effectively in years to come.

You’re no doubt aware of the current gender gap in children’s reading abilities. The 2012 OECD Council report on gender equality in education, states that in reading skills “boys lag behind girls at the end of compulsory education to the equivalent of a year’s schooling, on average, and are far less likely to spend time reading for pleasure.” It’s not a problem in every school, but 76% of the UK schools surveyed for The National Literacy Trust’s 2012 Boys’ Reading Commission Report, reported that “boys in their school did not do as well in reading as girls”.

Generally speaking, children’s literature currently appeals more to girls than boys. A similar sex difference in preferences for other children’s media, such as film or TV, might not be worth addressing, but children’s literature goes hand in hand with children’s literacy, an essential life skill. The gender gap in children’s literacy is linked to the gender gap in academic achievement as a whole. UCAS chief Mary Curnock Cook has warned of a “disquieting” gap between men and women going to university, which is continuing to widen. This year, the number of girls applying to universities in England is more than a third higher than the number of boys.

Given this problem, I’d like to suggest that you address what appears to be a pro-female gender-skew in the shortlisting and judging of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize.

Click image to see a larger version

Since the prize was set up in 2005, shortlisted female authors and illustrators have outnumbered males every year except 2007. This tendency has become particularly pronounced in recent years with only 3 men among the 19 authors and illustrators on both the 2014 and 2015 shortlists. While I don’t doubt that every one of these authors and illustrators created books that thoroughly deserved shortlisting, I do doubt that such a gender-skewed shortlist is the best way of nurturing a love of reading in both sexes.

Obviously the gender of a book’s author or illustrator does not directly equate to the gender of a reader that might find that book appealing. There are plenty of children’s authors and illustrators whose work appeals equally to both sexes: Dahl, Donaldson, Rowling and Pullman to name but a few. However the gender analysis published by Goodreads last November based on the data from 40,000 of Goodreads’ most active readers (20,000 readers of each sex) shows that both male and female readers have a strong preference for books written by authors of the same sex. 90% of the 50 most-read books by male readers were written by male authors, and an identical 90% of the 50 most-read books by female readers were written by female authors. Goodreads editor-in-chief Elizabeth Khuri Chandler has said that responses to the analysis suggest that “most people were unaware of the gender breakdown of the book they were reading” and that readers generally “don’t set out to read a male author or a female author. It’s all about the book.” If this is the case, then the analysis suggests, perhaps not surprisingly, that most authors are particularly good at writing literature that appeals to readers of the same sex.

I’m told that Waterstones has not responded to requests for a gender breakdown of the booksellers that compiled the 2015 shortlist. I don’t imagine that any of these booksellers were deliberately discriminating in favour of female authors and illustrators. Like the Khuri Chandler’s readers, I’m sure that their choices were “all about the book”, but if the Goodreads analysis is anything to go by, I’d guess that these booksellers were predominantly female.

The 2015 What Kids Are Reading report, published last month, analyses the reading habits of over half a million children in over 2,700 UK schools. Professor Keith Topping, the report’s author, suggests that the reading preferences of teachers and librarians could be influencing the book choices children are given in school. The report’s website notes that “worryingly, this trend could be disadvantaging boys at the expense of girls.” I think it’s reasonable to suggest that a lack of gender balance among the booksellers selecting the prize’s shortlists might result in a similar lack of gender balance in the shortlists’ appeal.

A strong predilection for same-sex reading could be seen as a problem that needs addressing. The current Waterstones Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman commented recently that “reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while,” and argued that certain books should not be written for certain people, “they should be read by everybody." This is a compelling argument for encouraging boys to read more books by female authors. However, given that female readers show an identical predilection for same-sex reading, shouldn’t we be encouraging girls to read more books by male authors as well? And, if that’s the case, shouldn’t the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize be highlighting the best of those male-authored books?

One justification that I’ve been given for the lack of gender balance in the prize’s shortlists is that there are relatively few men writing or illustrating children’s books. I know from my own experience of almost 20 years working in children’s picture book publishing that there are plenty of men writing and illustrating picture books, and about half of the fiction my wife and I read to our son and daughter at bedtimes was also written by male authors. I’m not so familiar with the demographics of the teen market, but have been told by several people, including The Bookseller’s Charlotte Eyre, that there are “lots of men” writing for this age range too. Despite this, there have been no male authors shortlisted in the Teen category for the last two years and only two male authors have been shortlisted in the four years since the category was established.

Another justification I’ve been offered for the lack of shortlisted men is that most of the best children’s books have been written by women in recent years. This echoes the most of the best films have been made my men claim that’s sometimes used to justify the lack of female directors and screenwriters shortlisted for the Academy Awards. The Academy has acknowledged that the lack of female nominees reflects the lack of women among its members (who select the shortlist) and their president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has said that the Academy is committed to addressing this.

A third argument I’ve heard is that, after centuries of pro-male bias, we ought to welcome instances like this where the tables have been turned. I’ve heard this same argument used to dismiss the need to address the gender gap in literacy and wider academic achievement. The problem with this argument is that it treats children as members of two competing gender tribes, rather than individuals. Children don’t choose their gender and have had no part in making the world they’re born into. So, regardless of whether they are a girl or a boy, they should be offered the same advantages and opportunities. While we should do all we can to discourage our sons from perpetuating the pro-male inequalities of the past, they should not be expected to contend with pro-female inequalities in reparation. We should be striving to offer equality across the board as a birthright to both sexes.

Mr Daunt, I hope that I’ve convinced you that gender-balancing both the shortlisting and judging of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize would be a great way of making your admirable award even more commendable. Gender balanced shortlisting and judging panels are already commonplace among grown-up book awards such as the Man Booker, which has produced an equal number of male and female winning authors since the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize began in 2005.

If Waterstones wants to give equal encouragement to young readers of both sexes, doesn’t it make sense for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize to give equal encouragement and recognition to writers and illustrators of both sexes as well?

Yours sincerely

Jonathan Emmett
Children’s Author

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UPDATE: I received a response from James Daunt which you can read here.

Another commentator who seems to think they know my views better than I do

I wrote a post back in April in response to some of the articles and blog posts I’d seen rejecting my call for more gender-balance in the world of picture book publishing and in picture book reviewing in particular. I commented then that some of my critics devoted their time to attacking “straw men” misrepresentations of my arguments rather than attempting to address my actual views. I also noted that none of these critics attempted to answer the question posed by the post that prompted the media interest - why should gender-balance be important to adult book reviewing, but irrelevant to children’s book reviewing?

Lefa Singleton Norton wrote a comment piece along similar lines for the news section of Australian broadcaster SBS’s web site today. I don’t respond to every such piece, but this time I took the bait and wrote a response in the comment section which I’ve also posted below. The first four paragraphs will be familiar to those who’ve read my recent posts, but I’ve made some new points in the subsequent paragraphs, which I thought were worth sharing on this blog.

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There are so many wrongful assumptions and misrepresentations of my argument in this piece that I hardly know where to start. I’m not at all “put out” by the failure of men “to dominate the modern publishing industry.” I’m arguing for gender-balance and against gender domination by either sex.

On page 15 of my COOL not CUTE essay I wrote this:

"I’d like to stress that I don’t believe that men are any more suited than women to these gatekeeper roles. If anything I think men are generally less suited, for reasons I’ve outlined in my separate article, NATURE and NURTURE. Individuals of both sexes inevitably bring some degree of subjectivity to their selection of reading material; it’s simply that male gatekeepers would generally bring a more boy-centred subjectivity."

I think we need more men in gatekeeper roles in UK picture book publishing, for exactly the same reason that I think we need more women in the UK Parliament and in the UK judiciary - because these groups ought to represent and serve both sexes equally!

I’ve always acknowledged that men are to blame for this problem. Here’s the penultimate paragraph from the conclusion of my COOL not CUTE essay:

"Over the 17 years I’ve been working in the industry, I’ve met hundreds of wonderful people in schools, libraries and publishing houses who are doing their utmost to engage children of both sexes in reading picture books; many of them do so on a voluntary basis. The overwhelming majority of these “wonderful people” have been women. As I said earlier, outside of writing and illustrating, few men seem to want to be involved with picture books. So let me make this clear — if one demographic group is chiefly to blame for the state of affairs I’ve outlined, it is adult men, for failing to take sufficient interest in what young children are reading."

So, yes, men are to blame for the problem, but does most men’s lack of engagement with the problem justify turning a blind eye to it? As Mary Curnock Cook, the head of UK’s Universities and Colleges Admissions Service commented recently, if we want a gender-balanced society, we need to encourage men to get involved in areas traditionally dominated by women just as much as we need to encourage women to get involved in areas traditionally dominated by men.

VIDA's gender analysis of US
Children's Book Awards.
Female authors are shown in BLUE,
male authors in RED.

Singleton Norton’s article mentions my efforts to get the judging of the Carnegie and Greenaway Medals, the UK’s “oldest and most prestigious children's book awards”, judged by a gender-balanced panel. Although the awards are given to books for children of both sexes, for the last two years all 13 judges on the panel have been female. I suspect that Singleton Norton would be less dismissive of my argument if I was calling for more gender-balance in an all-male judging panel. She cites VIDA’s “comprehensive list of awards” as demonstrating that “men dominate the charts and the top prizes”. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page on the VIDA site you can see a set of pie charts showing the gender balance of US children’s book awards. Women are shown in BLUE and men in RED. I can’t help wondering if Singleton Norton has got these two colours confused as the dominant colour in these charts seems to be blue (female).

Yes, there is a gender-balance problem with picture book protagonists, with male protagonists outnumbering females. I confess that I was not aware of the scale of the problem when I wrote the COOL not CUTE essay and, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s probably the one “missing ingredient” listed in the essay that I would omit if I were writing it today. One of the people who brought the protagonists issue to my attention is Liza Miller who wrote a dissertation on the subject and has since become my editor at Walker Books. The under-representation of female characters is clearly an issue that needs addressing, however I don’t think a bias towards male protagonists can be taken to demonstrate a pro-male bias across picture book content as a whole. While I’m sure we might not agree on every detail, Liza and I don’t see our two arguments as being in conflict; we both believe the world of picture books would benefit from being more gender-balanced, both in protagonists AND in gatekeeper roles. Singleton Norton is not the only commentator to rubbish my call for gender-balance and I’m indebted to Liza for voicing her support for my argument in this post on her blog.

Singleton Norton concludes her piece with the claim that my “belief that profits and sales shouldn’t come before gender equality only applies to the one very narrow count where women are statistically overrepresented.” Singleton Norton knows nothing of my wider opinions, so on what evidence is this claim based? Her argument seems to be more rooted in ideology and assumption than evidence.