Bestselling novelist Marian Keyes recently called the term “chick lit” derogatory, and now other female writers are expressing how much they dislike the term. READ MORE: These Female Writers Want To Stop “Chick Lit” Being Used To Describe Work By Women | BuzzFeed
Tag Archives: sexism
Novelist Finds That #Books About #Women Don’t Win Major #Awards | Jezebel #sexism #genderequality
We already knew that publishing is hard for women. VIDA’s annual count is a persistent reminder that, while the gender gap in publishing has begun to close, it’s still far from approaching equality.
But novelist Nicola Griffith had a feeling that it just wasn’t women writers that were underrepresented; books about women were absent as well. “I’ve been counting, subconsciously then consciously, for 20 years when I was first published and started to see how skewed the playing field was,” Griffith told Fusion. So Griffith gathered the data, and published it on her blog last week.
She found that regardless of the gender of the author, major awards overwhelming favored books about men and boys. READ MORE: Novelist Finds That Books About Women Don’t Win Major Awards | Jezebel
HuffPo: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Young #Women and Likability + Roxane Gay: ‘We Demand Perfection Of #Feminists. We Do Not Need To Do That.’ #feminism
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Thinks It’s Bullsh*t That Young Women Have To Be ‘Likable’ | Huffington Post
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is here to remind young women that whoever likes you or doesn’t like you should have no effect on your self worth. On May 19, the Nigerian author was honored at the 2015 Girls Write Now Awards, where she gave a riveting speech directed at young women — reminding them that their stories and their voices matter. “I think it’s important to tell your story truthfully and I think that’s a difficult thing to do — to be truly truthful,” Adichie told the crowd in New York City.
She said that it’s hard for women to be truthful when telling their stories because we’re conditioned to be concerned about offending people. Adichie told the young women in the crowd to forget about being liked. “If you start off thinking about being likable you’re not going to tell your story honestly because you’re going to be so concerned with not offending and that’s going to ruin your story. Forget about likability,” she said.
Roxane Gay: ‘We Demand Perfection Of Feminists. We Do Not Need To Do That.’ | Huffington Post
Roxane Gay has become known as a ‘bad feminist.’ The label comes from her August 2014 book’s title, a collection of essays which challenged how we define and interact with feminism. In it, Gay discusses why she doesn’t live up to the label, all the ways she’s a contradiction and how feminism, in many ways, is broken.
She took the stage Thursday at TED Women in Monterey, Calif. to break down how identifying as a “bad feminist” — originally an inside joke she had with herself — became a thing. In her 11-minute talk, she was funny, self-deprecating and painfully honest. That raw honesty awarded her a standing ovation.
However, it was her moving story of how feminism saved her that brought the auditorium to a hush.
Note: The video of Roxane Gay’s TEDWomen 2015 speech is not yet available.
It’s Not Women Who are the Problem in Tech Land | CNET #tech #sexism #genderequality
We are hearing more and more about gender equality issues in the tech industry. I liked this particular article from CNET, as studies are referenced which provide evidence that the more diverse teams are, the more innovative and financially successful the company will be. Overt and subtle biases of sexism toward women and girls are also discussed.
Silicon Valley’s male-dominated culture could cost the technology industry the thing it values most: innovation. READ MORE: It’s not women who are the problem in tech land | CNET.
You may also like: Women in tech don’t get the same respect as men, survey says | CNET
Must Read: New ‘Walk-In Comic Book’ Uses Augmented Reality to Show Sexual Assault Survivors as Heroes | Mashable #genderequality #comics #augmentedreality
Watch the video!!
//players.brightcove.net/1130468786001/82aa0c71-8d04-464e-a66f-d6f007663844_default/index.html?videoId=4224007635001
When a young woman in New Delhi, India, was brutally gang-raped on a bus in December 2012, making international headlines, Ram Devineni wasn’t going to stay silent. The filmmaker and artist marched in the streets alongside other protesters, calling for swift justice and systemic change to the all-too-common violence against women that plagues the country.
When he asked a Delhi police officer what he thought about the young woman’s assault, the officer told him, “No good girl walks home alone at night,” implying that she either provoked the rape or, worse, deserved it. His words reflected the misguided, patriarchal view that permeates much of Indian society, silencing women even further with social stigma.
“I realized at that moment that this was not a legal issue, but a cultural problem,” Devineni tells Mashable. “As a filmmaker and as an artist, I wanted to really address this in a cultural context.”
That’s why, two years later, he created and directed the transmedia comic book Priya’s Shakti — a story about the titular Priya, a gang-rape survivor-turned-superhero who partners with a Hindu goddess to fight sexual violence and challenge the patriarchy.
Co-written by Vikas K. Menon with artwork by Dan Goldman, the comic book is the first of its kind to use augmented reality and image recognition, using various media to tell the story of fighting back against sexual assault.
An Ambitious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Filmmakers | Open Culture
It’s a truism to say that Hollywood is a boy’s club but Dr. Stacy L. Smith of the University of Southern California put this saying into stark, empirical terms: a mere 4.4% of the top 100 box-office releases in the USA were directed by women. That’s it. It’s a percentage that should be used to describe the amount of cream in whole milk, not half the human race.
The truth is that the film industry in general, not just Hollywood, is dominated by men. In books on cinema and classes on film history, female directors frequently get overlooked.
Over at MUBI, someone aptly named Ally the Listmaker has taken great pains to counter that. She has compiled an exhaustive collection of movies by women. Ally’s list contains over 1400 movie titles, mostly films made within the past 20 years.
READ MORE: An Ambitious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Filmmakers | Open Culture.
Female Scientists Told to Get a Man to Help Them With Their Paper | Jezebel
This just in from the land of great sexism: two female scientists had a manuscript rejected by a peer-reviewed journal because they didn’t ask a man for help. An unnamed peer reviewer for the journal PLoS One suggested that Drs. Fiona Ingleby and Megan Head find male co-authors—any men at all—for a paper they’d written, in order to make sure they weren’t leaping to “ideologically biased assumptions.” READ MORE: Female Scientists Told to Get a Man to Help Them With Their Paper | Jezebel
Hey, Book World: Sexism is Way Bigger Than the Hugos | WIRED @WIRED @VIDA_lit #sexism #women #writers
Interesting comment on sexism in the literary world specific to representation of women in the literary arts.
I am a novelist. I also have a Master’s degree from MIT. So numbers appeal to me, especially numbers that provide clear data on thorny issues, like, oh, sexism and racism in literature. READ MORE: Hey, Book World: Sexism is Way Bigger Than the Hugos | WIRED.
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74 Essential Books for Your Personal Library: A List Curated by Female Creatives | Open Culture
When Open Culture recently published Jorge Luis Borges’ self-compiled list of 74 ‘great works of literature’, commissioned by Argentine publisher Hyspamerica, I, along with many others, saw one glaring issue in the otherwise fantastically diverse list: it included no works by female writers.
Whether intentional or not, the fact that women are excluded from Borges’ noteworthies (and in 1985, no less) means that a vast number of historically and culturally significant books and writings have been overlooked. While this ought not to discredit the works listed in any way, after witnessing the immense popularity of Borges’ list I certainly felt that for his selection to be relevant today it needed to be accompanied by a list of works which had been overlooked due to the gender of their respective authors.
I decided to put a suggestion to a group of international women writers, artists and curators, and we compiled our own list of 74 ‘great works of literature’ — one just as varied, loose and substantial as that of Borges, but made up solely of writers identifying as women or non-gender-binary. Over two days we amassed many suggestions, which I’ve now curated to form the list below. It’s not intended to invalidate the original, but rather to serve as an accompaniment to highlight and encourage a dialogue on gender imbalances in creative and intellectual realms, as well as to provide a balance by actively ‘equalising’ that of Jorge Luis Borges.
SEE THE LIST: 74 Essential Books for Your Personal Library: A List Curated by Female Creatives | Open Culture.
Mattel Pulls Sexist Barbie Book “I Can Be A Computer Engineer” Off Amazon | TechCrunch
The makers of Barbie seem to apologize A LOT for underestimating young women. This time the Internet’s buzzing over a pretty cringe-worthy Barbie book, “I Can Be A Computer Engineer,” published out of Random House.
READ MORE: Mattel Pulls Sexist Barbie Book “I Can Be A Computer Engineer” Off Amazon | TechCrunch.
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