How Women Conquered the World of Fiction

Written by Ananiah

You could walk up to any reader and ask them what they were reading. There is a 75% chance that it is a book by a woman author . We all know that until the late 90’s literature was highly dominated by male authors like William Boyd , Saul Bellow and John Updike , so when did this major shift occur ? In the Costa first novel award 75% of the nominees are women . Vintage , UK’s largest literary fiction division, announced that all five debut novels that are nominated for the prize are by women authors .

According to figures obtained from the Bookseller, 629 of the 1,000 bestselling books in the year of 2020 were written by women. According to a recent study the percentage of books published by women in contemporary fiction is 75% .

You can argue that there are men who are authors and have produced exemplary works but J K Rowling , Jane Austin and Sally Rooney are household names .

Let's go back to classical literature , while it is true that men won most of the literature awards , one can’t disagree that women writers were extremely popular even back then like Jane Austen , the Bronte sisters , L M Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott . There is also a large amount of evidence to prove that several famous classical works by men were heavily influenced by their wife’s journals and they drew inspiration and had taken advice from their wives which they implemented into their works.

So now to look into the audience consuming this content , a research study found that most men read one book in two years . Men from the age group of 20-40s said that they prefer to play videogames , watch YouTube , listen to podcasts and watch Netflix rather than read books . As most of the consumers of books are women , who are sure to gravitate to books about women. Such books are more relatable and cater to their needs and requirements .

I am glad that women are finally getting the recognition that they deserve for exemplary work in the field of literature and that a large audience is now acknowledging the works from the perspective of a woman , which is extremely important . Personally I think this is the beginning of change and I believe that we must continue to support women authors, especially women of colour .