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[faustus]

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.

Comments

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

Bettany Hughes has a respectable career in producing intelligent historical documentaries, that she both writes and presents. There is a tendency for reviewers to focus on what she looks like rather than what she says, and she probably isn't treated as having the gravitas of Schama or Starkey, but what she does is, in my view, as good.

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that feminism is a pretty Big Idea.

[kayxh.livejournal.com]

What was the last female fronted documentary
Stella Duffy on trying to write a Mills and Boon on BBC4 last week was the last one I saw.

[kayxh.livejournal.com]

More documentaries

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.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

While media commissioning editors are probably not looking for middle-aged, greyhaired, and not notably stylish* female historian/archivists to front their programmes, I suspect that they're also not looking for someone who is going to resist their tendency to tell things in nice neat sound-bitey stories and go 'It's All More Complicated' at every opportunity.

*I just don't see a woman with the general sartorial presence of the late great Roy Porter (bless 'im)** making it onto the small screen anytime in the near future.

**The 'been sleeping rough on the Embankment' look for which RP was famous.

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

There is an area of documentary programme where women do seem to be more prominent. The wildlife programme, with the likes of Charlotte Uhlenbroek, Saba Douglas-Hamilton, Kate Humble, and the woman who does the free-diving whose name I forget. Coast also featured Alice Roberts and Miranda Krestolnikoff quite a bit.
It's lighter, popular stuff rather than heavyweight rathere than the Schama type authore documentary though.