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Is the books world short-changing its bright young women?
Do men have an unfair advantage in our literary prize shortlists?
A variation on why don't women write books with big ideas (to which the answer is, I suspect, if they do it doesn't get counted as a big idea) which also then takes in why don't women present big documentaries?
What was the last female fronted documentary - leaving aside Cash in the Attic, Car Boot Challenge and whatever the Channel 4 sex show was called? These clearly don't stand up there with Schama, Winston, Starkey, Ferguson etc. Those art programmes with a nun and Victoria Wood on empire is the best I can do. But authored documentaries? Even when Paglia and Greer are doing stuff, it tends to be one off.
On the short list issue, I confess to a certain amount of "Well Zadie Smith gets everywhere" - but there's the old line about swallows and summers, and I got there by thinking "That Brick Lane woman, whatsername", although I was thinking about Zadie Smith despite going via a book by Monica Ali (Ali Smith was the mental jump).
The writer suggests that we don't like pushy women so they don't get onto shortlists. Or to do documentaries.
Do men have an unfair advantage in our literary prize shortlists?
A variation on why don't women write books with big ideas (to which the answer is, I suspect, if they do it doesn't get counted as a big idea) which also then takes in why don't women present big documentaries?
What was the last female fronted documentary - leaving aside Cash in the Attic, Car Boot Challenge and whatever the Channel 4 sex show was called? These clearly don't stand up there with Schama, Winston, Starkey, Ferguson etc. Those art programmes with a nun and Victoria Wood on empire is the best I can do. But authored documentaries? Even when Paglia and Greer are doing stuff, it tends to be one off.
On the short list issue, I confess to a certain amount of "Well Zadie Smith gets everywhere" - but there's the old line about swallows and summers, and I got there by thinking "That Brick Lane woman, whatsername", although I was thinking about Zadie Smith despite going via a book by Monica Ali (Ali Smith was the mental jump).
The writer suggests that we don't like pushy women so they don't get onto shortlists. Or to do documentaries.
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Something very interesting on C4 a few weeks ago about vaginas. And what about Jane Trey's documentaries Painted Babies, the one about American fathers who want to keep their daughters pure that was on C4 the other week.
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I would blame the commissioners not the presenters, of course
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It also strikes me that they are about female things: 'bits', beauty contests, romantic novels.
But overall how much female-fronted tv is there. All that comes to mind at the moment are various cooking shows and Property Ladder. See light and fluffy again. Our brains can't handle the big stuff.
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A sort-of exception was Prescott: Social Class and Me - which was a two-parter by Amanda Blue. (Checks his list of suppression tactics: But it wasn't very good.) It should have been big stuff but kept being fluffy.