by
Petra Hůlová
Originally
published June 1, 2018, at iLiteratura.cz: http://www.iliteratura.cz/Clanek/39993/
“I’ll agree to take part in discussions about ‘women’s
writing’ just as soon we start talking about ‘men’s writing,’” Slovak novelist
Svetlana Žuchová told me.
“They said 300 euros was the fixed fee for author appearances,
and they were sorry but they couldn’t raise it. After the event, though, I
found out in talking with two of the male participants that, unlike me, they got
400 euros,” German writer Tanja Dückers shared with me.
“None of the most famous translators of Czech to
English—[Michael Henry] Heim, [Peter] Kussi, or Paul Wilson—has translated a
single book by a Czech woman,” said US translator of Czech literature Alex
Zucker, adding, “We see the same huge disparity in women writers translated by women
as we do by men.”
Three days, three quotes, three conversations with people
close to me about women and literature week before last. All three demonstrate that
the situation is more complicated than it’s usually presented: either as a matter
of chauvinism or as a problem that doesn’t really exist. With regard to these
three quotes, that means:
1. This isn’t necessarily about objecting to the term “women’s
writing,” but the fact that it has no conceptual parallel. Yet all kinds of questions
spring to my mind on the subject of “men’s writing.” For instance: female
characters in male writing who generate ideas rather than relationships or
libido. I’m burning with curiosity.
2. Why it is that women get on average 25% less than
men for the same work has always been a mystery to me. It really never occurred
to me that lower pay might sometimes be “just” a result of the fact that women have
less self-confidence and tend to accept whatever they’re offered. This became
clear after Tanja Dückers publicly shared her experience of being paid a lower
fee for her appearance in Berlin, and then other women authors spoke out about similar
experiences. We’re familiar with the shibboleth of fixed fees in the Czech
literary world, too. Here, though, it’s often a gender-equal fee of nothing,
spiced up with the quip that it’s “good for your PR.”
3. It isn’t men who are to blame, but a way of
thinking on the part of everyone involved — ergo Zucker’s observation that women
translators, too, often translate primarily men, entirely of their own choice. Zucker,
on the other hand, is aiming to focus on translating women. The interest in
translating women authors in the U.S. was unleashed by author and translator
Alison Anderson’s text “Where
Are the Women in Translation?”, published in Words Without Borders in May 2013, leading to the Women
in Translation Month initiative and a series of “books
by women we’d love to see in English.” It’s great to have women authors being
prioritized, especially when it comes to English
translations of Czech literature, where the percentage of women comes nowhere
near the percentage of works being published by women in Czech every year.
Still, at its core, I don’t think this disparity is a result of the widely held
view that women write worse. The problem is that women are still often seen as
a group with a particular outlook, based on their shared “femininity,” whereas men
are considered individuals, representing only themselves, their fictional
worlds reflecting gender-neutral, universal human themes. Male authors are just
people writing about the world, which logically is going to appeal to people
the most.
It’s similar to when you
ask someone to draw you a person. They’re probably not going to draw a woman. That
would be too specific. So, what if instead of focusing on discrimination
against women’s literature, we were to think about what’s typical for the
category of “men’s writing”? Just as an exercise. On a panel where women would
be assertive enough to push for a higher “fixed” fee, we could analyze the specifics
of the masculine vision for some random trio of authors—say, [Ludvík] Vaculík, [Karel Hynek] Mácha and [Emil] Hakl. From a purely literary point of view, no emotions involved.
Translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker
