Tag: BAME

During our Something Rhymed salon series, and in the conversations they inspired, we looked at ways to accelerate gender parity in the literary world. We’ve compiled a list of all the suggestions that emerged. Perhaps there’s something here that you feel well-placed to do?

Readers

• Start with our own bookshelves. Do we read at least as many books by women as men? And do we read diversely in a broader sense too? If not, perhaps we might want to redress this balance by embarking on a period of reading only women, for example, or black and minority ethnic (BAME) writers or books published by independent presses.
• Take a look at the VIDA counts and consider subscribing to those magazines whose statistics show a commitment to gender parity. We might also want to think about cancelling subscriptions to magazines whose statistics have been consistently poor in this regard, and writing to the editor to explain why we’re turning away.
• Encourage our friends to read more diversely.
• Read stories to our children that explode gender stereotypes.
• Donate funds to organisations such as VIDA, who campaign for equality in the literary world.

Writers

• Start with our own writing. Do we explode gender and other stereotypes in our own work?
• Champion the excellent work of writers from discriminated against groups. We can do this through reviewing, blogging, writing endorsements, nominating for prizes, mentioning fellow authors in talks, holding firm in prize panel negotiations etc.
• Mentor emerging writers who might struggle to get their voices heard.
• Keep submitting our stereotype-exploding work to competitions and magazines.
• Set up a website or event series that focuses on the work of an excluded group.
• Edit a collection of work by writers whose voices are traditionally suppressed.
• Find a project we admire and ask those who run it what we might do to help.

Educators

• Design our syllabi to reflect diverse influences.
• Call our colleagues out when they fail to do likewise, and encourage our students to do the same.
• Provide talented students with resources and support to help them overcome barriers to success.
• Be alert to the preconceptions that might colour class debate and encourage students to question their own prejudices.
• Consider whether conscious or subconscious prejudice is affecting hiring decisions.
• Campaign for information about pay to be freely available, so that we can assess whether there are gender or other pay gaps in our institutions.
• Assist junior colleagues who face greater barriers to success.

Literary Industry Professionals

• Solicit work from writers whose backgrounds reflect the diversity of the general population.
• Ask our colleagues to be equally accountable.
• Keep reviewing our statistics, and asking how we might seek to improve them.
• Set up a journal or TV/radio show that sends review copies to reviewers without providing any information about the author.
• Set up a journal or show that asks two very different reviewers to review each book.
• Think hard about what we prize in writing, and whether any of this is based on prejudice.
• Is the academic at the highest level of the hierarchy necessarily the best person to write this review? Has privilege contributed to their rise up the ranks?
• Fight for information about pay to be freely available, so that we can assess whether there are gender or other pay gaps in our institutions.
• Assist junior colleagues who face greater barriers to success.
• Identify a gap and come up with strategies for filling it.
• Work with representatives of excluded groups to find excellent writers from these backgrounds.
• Consider whether a temporary quota might help.
• Set up a prize that will champion the work of an under-represented group.
• When running literary events, make sure that every element of it is committed to diversity in its broadest sense.
• Be brave!

Using the comment form below, please share any other strategies to accelerate greater diversity in the literary world. Or perhaps you intend to take us up on one of these suggestions. Do let us know what you plan to do.

We’ll be back on the first Monday in June with an autobiographical post by Emma on her early readings of Virginia Woolf – one of the authors who will feature in our forthcoming book, A Secret Sisterhood.