A gender divide, literally

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, MAY 23. For all the gender-bending, men will be men - snobbishly claiming a better sense of humour, a more cerebral worldview and less easy to be swayed by emotions.

Comments of an all-male literary prize jury reinforce the view that in the head-and-heart-divide men see themselves as the ones blessed with a thinking head, while women weakly let themselves be pulled by heart-strings.

Men and women who judged this year's Orange Prize for Fiction - the Western world's only prize meant exclusively for women - came to strikingly different conclusions with the male jury criticising women judges for ``lacking in humour'', and showing a bias for big names. Men also found women obsessed with ``issues'' - often of the sort that ``went out with the flood'', as one male judge put it.

``Po-faced and too issue-led'' was the verdict of the male jury on the shortlist prepared by women judges from the same 18 novels which men read separately to make their own shortlist. This was the first time the sponsors of the Orange Prize experimented with two juries - traditionally the prize is judged only by women - and the idea was to find out how differently men and women responded to works of women writers. In the end, however, it would be from the shortlist prepared by the female jury that the winner would be selected.

The male jury was appointed only to see how ``wrong'' they could get in judging women writers, and their work finished it is now over to women - all the way. There was only one title common to the two shortlists - ``The Idea of Perfection'' by Ms Kate Grenville; and women were surprised that men should have fallen for it. ``It's the most female book'', said one woman judge, Ms Rosie Boycott.

According to one academic who sat on both panels to study the gender differences in reading habits, men were more inclined to distrust emotional stories. ``The men did read for emotion but in a much more muted way - it was a desirable but not a necessary condition for fiction'', said Ms Jenny Hartley of Surrey University.

Mr. Paul Bailey, novelist who chaired the male jury, said women judges had a ``weakness'' for ``worthy books about issues which we found anathema''.

Those sort of books, he said, were best left to journalism - ``they just don't work so well in fiction.'' Besides, there ``weren't many laughs'' in most of the novels, he said, and particularly those picked up by women judges for their shortlist. Novels by women also had a dearth of ``likeable'' men characters - a charge denied by women.

The œ30,000-prize has been consistently criticised for dividing writers along gender lines, and Auberon Waugh witheringly dismissed it as a ``lemon prize''. Writers like Ms Anita Brookner have declined to enter their books for a woman- only prize.

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Section  : International
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