Woke Women’s Only Writers Award Fail

Have you heard of the Stella organisation that promotes women’s writing and literature in Australia? I hadn’t, but thank you to a viewer who pointed it out. It was named after Miles Franklin, an Australian writer and feminist whose first name was actually Stella. I guess you can guess where this is all going, but bear with me. According to their website, “Stella is a major voice for gender equality and cultural change in Australian literature.” Their flagship program is the annual Stella Prize, which celebrates Australian women’s writing. Sounds good, but how do they define “woman”? I’m sure you can guess. We’ll get to that soon. Their goal is to “tackle gender bias in the literary sector”. It must be horrible being a female writer in Australia, right? Well… I’ll show you some stats after that may surprise you.

According to their Purpose, Stella strives to promote books by Australian women and non-binary writers. Okay, so suddenly their definition of woman is starting to expand. So for example, this Australian Army Captain who now wears female uniform according to the ABC, could apply for the Stella Prize for women, noting the Captain said, “I’m gender diverse. I’m non-binary, and I am going to be opting for the female uniform.” Look, I’m not trying to pick on Captain Noble here. The Captain has only done what the Australian Government and society have allowed. Just one more quote that I found interesting: “Even though Captain Noble often wears camouflage in their daily duties, their options have expanded. ‘I can wear make-up now. My ears are pierced at work. I have longer hair than most male-presenting people do at work. My fingernails are painted.’” And now the good Captain can choose to take part in Stella’s annual literary awards for women, if they so desire.

Here are their eligibility criteria for entering the competition. “Entry is open to women and non-binary writers. This includes cis women, trans women and non-binary people. We do not require any validation regarding an author’s gender beyond their self-identification.” Hmm, this women’s-only literary award isn’t open to abuse is it! “Hello, my name’s Sandra, and this is my book on Masculine Femininity in the Post-Carbon Age.” First prize! Sorry, I feel like I just offended somebody there. I assure you, it wasn’t my intent. I’m just making a bit of a critique of the silliness of these eligibility guidelines for a women’s-only award.

But one criteria that caught my eye was Guideline #8: Books must be written in English. Do you mean, the language of England? That’s a bit presumptuous, perhaps even a bit bigoted!

Their entry form requires you to provide a book title and name, as well as the author’s pronouns. These are actually my official pronouns as accepted by YouTube. It’s amazing they allow this to go on, but here we are.

You have to provide a gender: Cis, Trans, Non-binary, and interestingly, Prefer not to say. For a competition that’s meant to be for women only, you don’t even have to provide them with your gender! The silliness continues. You must provide your cultural background with Aboriginal taking the top place, followed by Torres Strait Islander, with Other Australian coming in third. Obviously, this is all intentional. They’re obviously trying to make a point here.

But for an organisation that is ostensibly supporting women’s literature, one would think that women writers are extremely hard done by and underrepresented in Australia. Let’s take a look at the statistics.

This is the Australian Government’s Jobs and Skills website. We’ll be taking a look at their Data → View Data. Click on Occupations. Let’s search for Authors. Clicking on that we can see Female Share 63%. 63% of all authors are female? I thought it was going to be 5% from the way they were talking. The majority of authors are female! What an outrage! How about Authors, and Book and Script Editors, also 63%. Journalists, 55%. Technical Writers, 58%. Copywriters, 66%. Bloggers, Critics, Sports and Other Writers, 57%. In every single category, females outnumber men when it comes to writing. Can somebody please tell me what the hell Stella are on about? Where exactly is the gender bias that Stella are tackling? I just don’t see it.

Perhaps Stella should turn their focus to actual jobs where females are underrepresented. How about bricklayers? According to the Jobs and Skills website, bricklayers have a female share of only 1%. Perhaps they should be fighting the gender bias in bricklaying. What about Structural Steel Construction Workers, which also only have 1% females. Why aren’t they fighting for that? What about midwives? 99% female. What a terrible injustice!

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Allégro by Emmit Fenn