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Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
50 years of women's writing: The 21st century – a boom time... or is it?
This series has revisited women's writing of the past 50 years, tracking its recognition and visibility, and in the 21st century there has been undeniable progress. Irish women have fared exceptionally well, with Anne Enright and Anna Burns winning the Booker Prize, Lisa McInerney and Eimear McBride the Women's Prize; and the rise and rise of the cultural phenomenon that is Sally Rooney . Literary gatekeepers, it would seem, have seen the error of their omission and moved to rectify it. It would be cause for celebration were it not for the pesky numbers. In the past 25 years, there have been 17 male Booker Prize winners to 10 female, two of whom had to share. That's a ratio of almost 2:1, or to spell it out, two great male writers to every great woman writer. In the 21st century. Other prizes tell a similar story. Since 2000, nine women have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction compared to 16 men (two shared). READ MORE The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction (formerly the Samuel Johnson), first awarded in 1999 and billed as the UK's premier annual prize for non-fiction, boasts just eight women winners to 17 men. The shortlists tell their own story: 98 men were shortlisted compared to 50 women, and on only three occasions did a shortlist feature more women than men. These three years boasted a woman winner. Coincidence? No. Shortlists matter. It goes without saying that this year's 25th anniversary one-off 'winner of winners' was a man. The Pulitzer General Non-fiction prize did no better: eight women, one shared with a male winner, to 19 men. (Literary prizes only seem to be shared when there's a woman involved.) It's almost as if subjects of interest to women historians and biographers and journalists could not possibly be of interest to anyone else. Once again, the Women's Prize took up the slack, introducing a non-fiction prize in 2023. Writer and broadcaster Kate Mosse , announcing the launch of the prize, said it was 'not about taking the spotlight away from the brilliant male writers, it's about adding the women in'. You can't argue with the numbers, yet so often that is precisely what happens. To those who would claim that one doesn't need gender balance on every shortlist and panel as long as it evens out in the long run, know this: it never evens out. The counts tell us this again and again: the VIDAs; #WakingTheFeminists' gender analysis of Irish theatre; Anne Enright's 2017 London Review of Books essay, Call Yourself George (fun fact: VIDA, in 2016, found that the London Review of Books had 'the worst gender disparity' in its reviews, with women representing only 18 per cent of reviewers and 26 per cent of authors reviewed). If we are to even pretend that we consider women writers equal to men, gender balance is needed in every literary journal, every newspaper review section, every prize list, long and short: everywhere. Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, which won the 2014 Women's Prize for Fiction. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien In spite of a system stacked against them, 21st-century women writers flourished. For this woman writer, books kept me sane (by 2008 I had four children), and finally, after an extended apprenticeship, I wrote a couple myself. My PhD on women writing trauma kept me firmly in the zone, with a focus on Eimear McBride's singular novel, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, and its astonishing stage production directed by Annie Ryan. There are too many books to talk about in this period, so I will pretend there is a gun to my head and I must choose just two. The Baillie Gifford in 2004 could not overlook Australian Anna Funder's brilliant Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, which sheds light on life in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), 'the most perfected surveillance state of all time', where it was estimated that there was one informer for every 6.5 citizens. [ A breakthrough era for women's writing, from Edna O'Brien's risks to JK Rowling's Harry Potter debut Opens in new window ] Funder placed an ad in a newspaper asking to speak to former members of the secret police force, the Stasi, and received an overwhelming response. Following leads that took her to the most unexpected of places, she writes about the women 'who sit in Nuremberg puzzling together the shredded files the Stasi couldn't burn or pulp', and East Germans such as Sigrid Paul, who found herself on the opposite side of the wall to her baby, who was being cared for in Westend Hospital in West Berlin. Stasiland is not a history, trotting out impersonal facts; rather, it's a collection of essays, and essays digress. Deploying what Edward Hoagland calls the artful 'I' of an essay and other tools of fiction, Funder weaves her own story through the book, revealing life in the GDR in engaging, witty and often highly personal prose, joining the ranks of the many women essayists who made their mark over the timespan of this series: Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard, Rebecca Solnit, Roxane Gay, Rachel Cusk, Sinéad Gleeson and Emilie Pine, to name but a few. The Booker got it right with Milkman, Anna Burns' 2018 novel, which was also named best Irish fiction title of the 21st century in a recent Irish Times survey. I would go one further and take out the word Irish. Milkman is an extraordinary feat of telling the truth, slant, to invoke Emily Dickinson. Who knew that one of the most insightful and enlightening voices of the Troubles would be that of an unnamed teenaged protagonist who likes to read while walking? 'The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died,' it begins, and if you haven't read it yet, what are you waiting for? The category and methods that have largely defined this series – women and counting – show that progress has been made, albeit from a very low base, yet the gender gap in the literary field stubbornly remains. Not only are women authors seen as producing literature of lower literary value – literary prizes hammer this home again and again – there is even a gendered genre hierarchy. [ The Wardrobe Department by Elaine Garvey: Evocation of youthful self-discovery is well wrought and truthful Opens in new window ] Dutch researcher CW Koolen uses computational analysis and other methods to demonstrate that so-called 'chick lit', usually perceived to have been written by women, is seen as of lesser quality than spy or thriller novels, usually perceived to have been written by men. Counting is dull work, but as long as we live in societies that value and prioritise men's voices and experiences over women's, it remains necessary. (Space does not allow for distinctions of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, economic status, age, education, disability, etc, of the writers discussed in this series, but 'woman' is not a monolith, and over the past 25 years, across forms and genres, women writers have provided essential global sociopolitical perspectives.) This series has been about accountability, but it has also been a celebration of brilliant writing by women that informs, entertains, provokes and inspires. Women like myself, writing in the 21st century, owe an enormous debt of gratitude to our literary foremothers – the essayists, poets, dramatists, critics and novelists – of the past 50 years. Leaning into my personal fiction bias, what other 21st-century flavoured novels would I press into your hand? In no particular order: Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin; 2003's Adolescence; My Year of Rest and Relaxation – the ultimate Millennial read, in which Ottessa Moshfegh's unnamed narrator spends most of the novel sleeping (yet we're still talking about it); Room by Emma Donoghue; Zadie Smith's White Teeth; Jane Urquhart's The Stone Carvers; A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan – playing with all the forms; the Neapolitan novels, of course, by pseudonymous author Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein), starting with My Brilliant Friend in 2012; The Weekend by Australian author Charlotte Wood; Theory and Practice by Sri Lankan-Australian author Michelle de Kretser, for anyone who has ever experienced the dubious pleasures of literary theory with a capital T; and there are so many more. Looking back has been a joy. And now I'm looking forward: here's to the next 50 years of women's writing. Paula McGrath is a novelist and assistant professor of Creative Writing at UCD Reading list Stasiland by Anna Funder (2004) – pulling back the Iron Curtain one essay at a time. Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life (2024) – yes, I'm sneaking in Funder's novel, too. Wifedom combines the biography of Eileen O'Shaughnessy, wife of George Orwell, with personal memoir, exploring for both women what it means to be a writer and a wife. Milkman by Anna Burns (2018) – the GOAT, in this writer's humble opinion. Generation (2015) and A History of Running Away (2017) by Paula McGrath – because if you liked this series, you might enjoy the novels ...
Irish Times
7 hours ago
- Irish Times
Flower-bed barriers to be placed around Molly Malone statue to discourage tourists from touching breasts
Dublin City Council plans to place flower beds around the plinth holding the statue of Molly Malone to prevent tourists from rubbing its bosom. The statue on Suffolk Street has suffered discolouration to its breasts due to a recently contrived 'tradition' suggesting touching them brings good luck. It is a popular place to take photographs, with members of the public climbing on to the unprotected plinth. The council had stewards in position for a week in May asking people not to interact with the sculpture. However, the stewards, while successfully in discouraging people, cannot be in place around the clock, and touching resumed as soon as they were absent. The bronze statue has lost its patina in the chest area, exposing the structure to further damage. Climbing on the plinth has also slightly dislodged the pins that hold it in place. READ MORE Council arts officer Ray Yeates said there are divided opinions about how important it is to prevent the so-called tourist tradition. 'Some people are very upset and others thinks 'what matter?'' he said. However, the damage to the statue has prompted council action. Noting the difficulty of changing visitors' behaviour, Mr Yeates said: 'We are exploring other avenues of protection for the sculpture, including installing flower beds around the base.' Over the next six weeks the site will be covered in a shroud as the statue's finish is restored and the plinth secured. Flower boxes will be put in position, making it more difficult to reach the seafood seller's chest. Overall the works are expected to cost in the region of €20,000. If this is not enough to discourage visitors from damaging the statue, 'we will try something else', Mr Yeates said.
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
People in disadvantaged communities have more negative attitude towards immigration, ESRI report finds
People living in disadvantaged communities in Ireland have a more negative attitude towards immigration , particularly in areas where there has been an increase in migrants, new research has found. The study by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) looked at how different types of communities shaped people's attitudes towards immigration in Ireland. The analysis is based on a 2023 Department of Equality survey on Irish attitudes towards migration and is combined with 2022 census data on the characteristics of communities. The study defines disadvantaged areas as places with higher proportions of households headed by lone parents, the unemployed and those with a low education level or semi-skilled/unskilled jobs. READ MORE People living in these areas are less positive about immigration, with researchers quoting previous studies that found there is a 'greater perceived resource threat' among people in these areas, 'given more economically precarious individuals are likely to feel immigration is a particular threat to their position and resources'. While this negative attitude towards immigration in disadvantaged areas increased when the share of migrants went up, the paper also found that migrants are not more likely to live in these disadvantaged communities. It found the largest increase of migrant share between 2011 and 2022 happened in areas that are the least disadvantaged. The research also found that those living in rural areas had more negative attitudes towards immigration, compared with those living in urban areas. However, rural areas with high percentages of migrants had similar attitudes toward immigration as those in urban areas. The research also found that people living in more segregated areas, where migrants are living in clusters, have more negative attitudes towards immigration. The paper says this may reflect the importance of social contact with migrants for fostering more positive attitudes. 'This has important implications for policies aimed at improving migrant integration, but also indicates that broader economic and social policies and factors play a key role in social cohesion and attitudes towards immigration,' the paper says. There was no link between people living in areas with greater pressure on services such as health, housing and education and holding a more negative attitude towards immigration. This indicates that it may not be direct local experiences that affect attitudes but may instead be 'concern about pressure on services in Ireland as a whole', the paper says. Report author Fran McGinnity said the research 'shows that local communities can generate both obstacles to, but also opportunities for, social integration between non-migrants and migrants'. 'Communities are spaces where migrants and non-migrants not only encounter each other but can also form lasting social ties. This could be as next-door neighbours, as parents of children going to the same school, or in community groups. 'This kind of positive social contact between migrants and non-migrants can go a long way to generating positive relations between groups as well as building stronger, more cohesive communities in the long run,' Ms McGinnity said. Meanwhile, co-author of the report Keire Murphy said the research gives 'important insight into what makes anti-immigrant sentiment more likely'. 'Echoing international findings, socioeconomic factors like community-level disadvantage seem to matter, implying that the broader social and economic context is important for attitudes towards immigration,' Ms Murphy said.
