Simply ‘Chick Lit’? Forget it.

Excitement is mounting surrounding a unique initiative that aims to curb the gender bias in the literary world. Literary sexism, it appears, is alive and well and the Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge is working to help swing some of the literary love in the direction of the fairer sex.

Finding the solution to gender bias in the literature world is firstly about figuring out the cause. After all, it seems that literature is a women’s world. Literature tutes at universities unequivocally contain a majority of females and, according to British research, women buy almost twice as many books of all kinds as men. Men undertaking arts degrees are shooting fish in a barrel if they are looking for love.

Women also write approximately half the books published, so there is no disparity content-wise. The publishing industry is also dominated by dames, with women taking up 62 per cent of publishing roles (although most senior roles are held by men). In the US, Britain and Germany, 80% of fiction readers are women. Author Ian McEwan said, ‘when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.’

Yet women are notoriously underrepresented when it comes to book reviews. VIDA, an American women’s literary organisation, surveyed some of the leading literary and cultural journals in the United Kingdom and United States, measuring up the number of books reviews written by males and females and the number of male and female authors that received reviews.

The results are heavily skewed in the male favour, and these are high quality publications such as The New York Times Book Review and the London Review of Books, to the point where the slice of the pie taken up by females is as measly as a single trivial pursuit victory. In The New York Times Book Review for example, nearly two books by men were reviewed for every one by a woman.

Crime writer Tara Moss writes on her blog of the VIDA survey: “Reading those statistics was a shock to me, as they would be to anyone else... The point is, the bias is unconscious, which means most of us are unaware of it. When we are made aware of it, it is surprising indeed. Like many book lovers and reviewers, it made me look at my own reading lists and reviews to see if I, too, was letting that unconscious bias creep in.”

Blogger Elizabeth Lhuede was inspired to start the Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge after reading Moss’s comments and looking at the statistics. Lhuede says that after reading the crime queen’s comments, “I realised then how often in discussions on gender bias, men were blamed for the problem of the lack of reviews, even though women constitute the bulk of readers (and roles in publishing and bookselling).”

“I knew I hadn't been doing much reading (except of books by friends), let alone reviewing. It occurred to me to wonder if women were handing their power over to men, being victims, instead of doing something positive to change things. Instead of waiting and hoping male readers might change, couldn't women make a conscious effort to read and review more books by other Australian women? That's really what inspired me to create the challenge, the desire to make a difference,” she explains.

With her challenge, women are doing just that. In January of this year 229 people had already signed on to read and review books by Australian women during 2012, in all genres. Already more than 76 books by Australian women have been posted on the challenge page since January 1st, and it’s only just beginning. It is hoped that increasing the reviews and notoriety of novels penned by women may also help correct inequity when it comes to major prizes and awards as well.

The Miles Franklin Award is one that has drawn some of the most attention for lack of female representation. This is especially significant considering that the awards’ namesake, Stella Miles Franklin, was one of Australia’s most prolific early Australian fiction writers. Her novel My Brilliant Careeer is one of the most revered in our small but steadfast literary history.

Despite the awards being named after a female writer, a woman has won only 13 times in its more than 50 year history and four of these times this was Thea Astley, who twice shared the award. In the past decade only two women have won, inspiring a female only offshoot of the awards, the ‘Stella’ awards, which work in much the same way as Britain's Orange Prize for fiction. Lhuede hopes to raise the profile of the Stella prize through her work as well.

Lhuede has asked Australian women readers: “How many books by Australian women do you read and review? The answer for many women I've contacted (including myself until the last sixth months) is "surprisingly few".”

“I want the challenge to help change that. I've discovered some very talented writers since I've consciously focused on reading books by Australian women - and I don't mean the older generation of Elizabeth Jolley and Thea Astley, or the well-known ones like Kate Grenville, Geraldine Brooks and Helen Garner. I mean younger authors including Gail Jones, Heather Rose, Charlotte Wood, Kalinda Ashton and Kirsten Tranter - all talented writers.”

For the moment, bookshops, teachers, librarians and readers from all corners of Australia are getting involved via Twitter (#aww2012 hashtag), blogs and Facebook. The challenge is a perfect fit for National Year of Reading activities already taking place in 2012.

If you want to get involved visit http://www.australianwomenwriters.com/p/australian-women-writers-book-challenge_25.html