{"id":1994,"date":"2015-06-07T17:46:48","date_gmt":"2015-06-07T07:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1994"},"modified":"2015-06-07T17:46:48","modified_gmt":"2015-06-07T07:46:48","slug":"women-count-qld-vic-nsw-awards-for-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1994","title":{"rendered":"Women Count (QLD, Vic &#038; NSW Awards for fiction)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is the second in a series of blog posts looking at gender and literary awards. In particular, these posts look at\u00a0the gender of the authors of award-winning books, and the gender of the main or viewpoint character\/s of those books.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve found this research quite exciting and interesting, because it reveals another face of gender bias in literary awards. There&#8217;s been a lot of attention and discussion on the bias towards male authors in handing out literary awards, but it&#8217;s far more difficult, generally, to talk about the contents of the books that win awards. Though looking at the gender of the main or viewpoint characters can&#8217;t tell you everything about a book, obviously, when considered<em> en masse<\/em>, some interesting patterns emerge.<\/p>\n<p>This post provides statistics relating to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>[1999 &#8211; 2014] Queensland Premier&#8217;s Literary Award for Fiction (now the Queensland Literary Award: Fiction Book Award);<\/li>\n<li>[1985 &#8211; 2014] Victorian Premier&#8217;s Literary Award for Fiction (known as the Vance Palmer Award between 1985 and 2010)<\/li>\n<li>[1979 &#8211; 2014] NSW Premier&#8217;s Literary Award for Fiction (aka the Christina Stead Award)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/QLDPrems.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1996\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/QLDPrems.jpg?resize=417%2C244\" alt=\"QLDPrems\" width=\"417\" height=\"244\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/QLDPrems.jpg?w=417 417w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/QLDPrems.jpg?resize=300%2C176 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 417px) 100vw, 417px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>6 female authors<\/li>\n<li>10\u00a0male authors<\/li>\n<li>4\u00a0books about female characters (2 by male authors, 2 by female authors)<\/li>\n<li>6\u00a0books about male characters (5 by male authors, 1 by a female author)<\/li>\n<li>6 books about both male and female characters (3 by male authors, 3 by female authors)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/VICPrems.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1997\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/VICPrems.jpg?resize=417%2C244\" alt=\"VICPrems\" width=\"417\" height=\"244\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/VICPrems.jpg?w=417 417w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/VICPrems.jpg?resize=300%2C176 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 417px) 100vw, 417px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>9 female authors<\/li>\n<li>20 male authors<\/li>\n<li>5 books about female characters (all by female authors)<\/li>\n<li>20 books about male characters (16 by male authors, 4 by female authors)<\/li>\n<li>4 books about both male and female characters (all by male authors)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/NSWPrems.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1998\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/NSWPrems.jpg?resize=417%2C244\" alt=\"NSWPrems\" width=\"417\" height=\"244\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/NSWPrems.jpg?w=417 417w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/NSWPrems.jpg?resize=300%2C176 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 417px) 100vw, 417px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>14 female authors<\/li>\n<li>21 male authors<\/li>\n<li>9 books about female characters (7 by female authors, 2 by male authors)<\/li>\n<li>20 books about male characters (3 by female authors, 17 by male authors)<\/li>\n<li>6 books about both male and female characters (4 by female authors, 2 by male authors)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Finally, the combined statistics collected so far:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Combined2Date.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2000\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Combined2Date.jpg?resize=417%2C244\" alt=\"Combined2Date\" width=\"417\" height=\"244\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Combined2Date.jpg?w=417 417w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Combined2Date.jpg?resize=300%2C176 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 417px) 100vw, 417px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">36 female authors<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">66 male authors<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">22 books about female characters<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">56 books about male characters<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">24 books about both male and female characters<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The statistics collected so far relate to just over 100 winning books (102 books, to be precise).<\/p>\n<p>Authors of the winning titles are overwhelmingly male, with 66 of 102 winning books written by men (c. 65%).<\/p>\n<p>Winning books are also overwhelmingly <strong>more likely to be about male characters<\/strong>, or have male viewpoint characters: 56 of the 102 titles were about male characters (55%).<\/p>\n<p>Winning books were more likely to be about male characters than about female characters (c. 21%), both genders (c. 23%), or about both\u00a0female characters or both genders combined (c. 44%).<\/p>\n<p><strong>NOTE<\/strong>: Where the winners are collections of short fiction, and I don&#8217;t have access to the text\/s, I have counted the books as having both male and female viewpoint\/main characters.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Next \u2026<\/strong> the rest of the state literary awards for fiction.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The first post in this series looked at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1981\">Miles Franklin Literary Award<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>This series of posts was inspired by  of some of the big international awards, including the Pulitzer, the Man Booker, the National Book Award, the Hugos, and more &#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the second in a series of blog posts looking at gender and literary awards. In particular, these posts look at\u00a0the gender of the authors of award-winning books, and the gender of the main or viewpoint character\/s of those books. I&#8217;ve found this research quite exciting and interesting, because it reveals another face of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[67,653,193,167,667,182],"tags":[1177,1180,1173,1179,1169,305,1174,1175,1178,1176],"class_list":["post-1994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-competitions-opportunities","category-academic-and-other-research","category-on-reading","category-on-writing","category-research","category-work-in-progress","tag-christina-stead-prize","tag-female-characters","tag-literary-statistics","tag-male-characters","tag-nicola-griffith","tag-nsw-premiers-literary-award","tag-queensland-literary-awards","tag-queensland-premiers-literary-awards","tag-vance-palmer-award","tag-victorian-premiers-literary-awards"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LH1G-wa","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Combined2Date.jpg?fit=417%2C244","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1994"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2001,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions\/2001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}