Gender Issues in the Book World

Photo by Jonathan Cooper on Unsplash

Female writers have arguably always been somewhat on the back-foot in the literary world, whether that be with writing and publishing, or simply with the reviews that inevitably follow. Yet for a society that claims inclusivity and gender equality, there still remains a shocking amount of unrest in this field. 

A recent study (2018), by sociologist Dana Beth Weinberg and mathematician Adam Kapelner of Queens College-CUNY, has revealed that books by female authors are on average priced at nearly half (45% less) than that of those written by men. While it is little surprising to see segregation by genre and the different values placed on each genre, this figure is truly staggering. Research shows that there is also a huge lack of female writers in the professional fields of physics, computer science, maths and surgery, which is largely expected to continue for at least the rest of the century.

J.K. Rowling (1999)

Clearly, male authors are greatly favoured even today, so it is no wonder that women continue to write under male and masculine pseudonyms. The likes of J.K. Rowling, famed for her Harry Potter series, is in fact guilty of this herself. In addition to her already gender ambiguous pen name, 2013 saw the release of the first book in her series of crime novels, written instead under the name Robert Galbraith. Despite arguments that the decision was made in order to separate her works from Potter and receive feedback without hype or expectation, a number of heads were certainly turned when she was outed after its release. She tells how “there was a phenomenal amount of pressure that went with being the writer of Harry Potter, and that aspect of publishing those books I do not particularly miss”. Since then, she has continued to write the series under the same pen name, Gailbraith, having released a further three books since 2013 (four in total).

Of course, Rowling is far from the first female author to write under an alias. Of the most famous female contemporaries is Mary Ann Evans, who adopted the male pseudonym George Eliot when George Henry Lewes – the English philosopher and critic with whom she was romantically involved – encouraged her to take up writing fiction. Her politically charged writing meant that a male persona was necessary in order to discourage the female stereotyping, without which some of her best-known works, such as Middlemarch, may not have achieved so much success.  
Little Women author Louisa May Alcott also frequently employed the ambiguous name A.M. Bernard for her gothic thrillers which contained material deemed ‘unladylike’ for a late 19^th century female writer. Her works under this name include Behind A Mask and A Long Fatal Love Chase, centred on strong themes of class and manipulation. 


The Brontë Sisters
Digitally restored painting 
by Patrick Branwell Brontë

Even the Brontë sisters, today considered among the greatest novelists of our time, for a long while wrote under male pseudonyms, again believing that their physical presence as women would likely cause prejudice even before publication. The sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne in fact first published as Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.

While male aliases for female writers were a regular occurrence in years gone by, in fact, today we also see an inversion of this, whereby a number of male writers also publish under ambiguous or feminine names themselves. In a world of romance novels, male authors have long disguised their gender; faced with the stereotypes that certain genres are inappropriate for the masculine writer, the change of name ultimately has the same function – to help encourage book sales. SJ (Steve) Watson, the author of 2011’s Before I Go to Sleep, has described how withholding his full identity was a way “to reassure myself that the voice worked”, as a man writing from a female perspective. Female aliases are also commonly used to escape a certain identity, such as Mohammed Moulessehoul, who wrote under his wife’s name, Yasmina Khadra; his books were celebrated as the “authentic voice of the Arab woman” until his real identity was discovered in 2005.

If we truly believe that anyone can be anything in a modern world, then why does it seem like anyone can’t write just anything – prejudice and stereotypes will always prove to be a dominant force in a writer’s career. With such a push on modern gender equality and freedom of self, why then are we still seeing such astounding figures and gender revelations? Of course, in may cases it is understandable, given the stereotyping of today, but still surely authors should be shown to be breaking these expectations rather than simply enforcing them further. 

 Read Rowling's full interview with NPR here.