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7 April 2019 2.00 h

Àngels Cabré

Head of the Cultural Observatory of Gender and writer

“It’s harder for women writers”

Some six years ago, the writer Àngels Cabré decided it was time to set up the Cultural Observatory of Gender in order to condemn “the invisibility” and “under-representation” of women in the arts sector

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Vir­ginia Woolf won­dered how much more dif­fi­cult life would have been for an imag­ined sis­ter of Shake­speare born with his gifts. Would it be eas­ier today?
I al­ways ex­plain the story of Shake­speare’s sis­ter, A Room of One’s Own, be­cause it’s sig­nif­i­cant. All so­ci­eties pose dif­fer­ent dif­fi­cul­ties for women (ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion, to cul­ture...). After Woolf, women writ­ers began to con­struct a ge­neal­ogy that later our writ­ers – M. Aurèlia Cap­many, Montser­rat Roig, Maria Mercè Marçal – helped es­tab­lish. Ob­vi­ously things are eas­ier now, be­cause we have ed­u­ca­tion, but we con­tinue to be under-rep­re­sented. Com­pared with other cul­tural sec­tors, lit­er­a­ture is where women are most rep­re­sented. Yet, that’s de­cep­tive, be­cause we did a study that showed women only win 18% of lit­er­ary prizes. That means it’s much harder for women to es­tab­lish them­selves as writ­ers.
Why is it that women only win such a low per­cent­age of lit­er­ary prizes?
A great many pan­els are dom­i­nated by men, be­cause there’s still a lin­ger­ing be­lief that books by men are more in­ter­est­ing, and be­cause a male ho­moso­cia­bil­ity ex­ists that means many men re­serve their sup­port for male friends, which means there’s a lot of hand­ing prizes back and forth. The same thing hap­pens with pub­lish­ers. Apart from the re­cent fem­i­nist trend, which means books are com­ing out that no one would have pub­lished five years ago, pub­lish­ers mostly still pub­lish books writ­ten by men. We found prizes that no woman had ever won. It seems as if things are more equal, but in re­al­ity it is not the case.
Only 20% of books pub­lished are by women, but the sta­tis­tics also say that women read more than men.
Yes, this is where there is a con­tra­dic­tion. It’s a na­tional dis­grace. Not only do they hin­der us from being pro­duc­ers, but even know­ing we’re the major con­sumers, they don’t re­spect that ma­jor­ity. They’re fail­ing to con­nect with the pub­lic be­cause they pro­vide prod­ucts that do not di­rectly in­ter­est that au­di­ence. That’s how we find our­selves with a se­ries of women read­ing a se­ries of men whose way of doing things is out­moded, and at the same time we’re miss­ing out on trans­la­tions and things pro­duced here that are in­ter­est­ing and have to be pub­lished by small pub­lish­ers on the back of a lot of un­paid ef­fort. That’s why, in my opin­ion, we have such a low lit­er­ary level here. Today, women are much bet­ter pre­pared than men (we have more qual­i­fi­ca­tions, more doc­tor­ates, more lan­guages...) and yet male tal­ent con­tin­ues to be recog­nised above that of women. A woman has to be as good as Shake­speare to be able to give a talk at an im­por­tant event. We’re clearly under-rep­re­sented.
The lit­er­a­ture sec­tor con­tin­ues to be too male dom­i­nated?
Yes! An ex­am­ple can be seen in news­pa­per cul­ture sup­ple­ments, where the ma­jor­ity of con­trib­u­tors are men, while the books fea­tured are mostly by men. And women are only in­cluded when it’s fash­ion­able and there is no al­ter­na­tive, whether good or bad, which doesn’t help ei­ther, while as a rule the in­ter­est­ing books don’t get a look in. I speak from ex­pe­ri­ence, be­cause I’ve spent al­most 30 years as a lit­er­ary critic, and it’s been tough to in­tro­duce con­tent by women.
Is it the case that the re­cent equal­ity law is not being en­forced?
The equal­ity law does not fore­see penal­ties, which means no one com­plies with it. That needs to be fixed, and wher­ever a sin­gle euro of pub­lic money goes, whether to a news­pa­per, a pub­lisher, a cul­tural venue or an in­sti­tu­tion, it has to be dis­trib­uted evenly.
Would I have a bet­ter chance of a pub­lisher tak­ing me on if I were a man?
Yes. As the sta­tis­tics show, women only get 18% of lit­er­ary prizes, and men get 82%. I haven’t en­tered for a prize for ages be­cause I saw this per­cent­age. And we also have to talk about pan­els, most of which are made up of men. From the out­side it seems as if there are a lot of women, but the fig­ures show a dif­fer­ent re­al­ity. Let’s not de­ceive our­selves.
Are you in favour of quo­tas?
To­tally. Quo­tas are ab­solutely nec­es­sary as long as equal­ity has not been achieved. When any sec­tor is under-rep­re­sented, quo­tas are a lesser evil. After a man has been in charge of a mu­seum for 30 years, the pri­or­ity should be to ap­point a woman. It should be the same with lit­er­ary prizes, so that if a woman has never won it, it should only be awarded to women for some years.
Is there no po­lit­i­cal will­ing­ness to force com­pli­ance?
Zero. There are lot of false­hoods about quo­tas, say­ing that it’s about putting bad women in the place of good men, but that’s not what it is. The world is full of mediocre men. When equally ca­pa­ble, wher­ever some­one is needed, we need to pri­ori­tise. For ex­am­ple, in a pri­mary school where there is no male teacher, a man should get pri­or­ity for the first post that be­comes avail­able, be­cause that school de­serves var­ied rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Quo­tas for both sides, wher­ever it’s re­quired, to make so­ci­ety more fair and even. But there’s no po­lit­i­cal will to do that. While there are po­lit­i­cal par­ties that re­ject quo­tas, such as Ciu­tadans, there are oth­ers like Vox that deny gen­der abuse ex­ists. The rest, as far as quo­tas are con­cerned, should be more rig­or­ous in ap­ply­ing them.

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