From Stuff news:
"The first New Zealand writers to be chosen in a new initiative to celebrate and acknowledge literary success have been announced.
Owen Marshall, Damien Wilkins, Ted Dawe and Martin Edmond are this year's New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) honorary literary fellows.
They were recognised for their outstanding literary achievements in an inaugural Waitangi Day honours list, the society said."
Last time I looked, there were plenty of women as well as men in the "outstanding writers" category. Is this a kind of post-Catton backlash, I wonder? Imagine the outcry if four women had been chosen.
6 comments:
I don't think there would have been much if any of an outcry if four women had been chosen.
Has there been one in the recent past that I am unaware of that informs your view?
A post-Catton backlash?
Really?
Six of the Eight seats on the National Council of the NZSA are women.
I think you could consider your passing thought unnecessarily paranoid. However, perhaps a review of the winners over the last 10 years, and the fluidity/refresh rate of the judging panel might be worth doing in your spare time.
The people that won this year do seem deserving.
It isn't a prize, it's an award. Of course the four writers named are deserving.
Graeme, yes, there is. When, for the first ( and apparently last) time ever, all the recipients of the highest state honour were women, there was a marked outcry. Similarly there was a great deal of comment, the majority negative and in some cases vitriolic, when for a very brief time the top four constitutional offices were held by women. Decades of all male equivalents were simply regarded as normal.
It's been my great pleasure to interact with Jenny Gorman, one of the regional delegates, personally and professionally.
I can assure you Jenny is a strong and committed feminist and would never let any sexist decision pass without resigning.
So this assures me that this is not an example of sexism in action, or a post-Catton backlash.
Women hold up about half the sky, yet are under-represented in so many examples like the one AnneE gives. I think it's natural to question whether this is a result of bias, unconscious or otherwise. Especially when it happens again and again and again. Witness the reasonably routine spectacle at Honours time, twice a year, when there are usually double the number of new knights than new dames.
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