story in context. ij : Alison Croggon : 20 Apr 2011 3:05:51pm Thanks all for your comments. I'm writing on a phone and so you'll have to excuse my brevity (and/or typos). I'd just like to clarify one point, which seems to be misunderstood here. Some commenters seem to be suggesting that my last par is calling for some kind of quota system. I am, as should be clear, no supporter of quotas, because they don't work (it's been tried) and in fact might even be counter- productive. What is required, pace the spanner example, is something rather more difficult: a rethinking of the male-orientated assumptions that underpin so many aspects of our thinking, and which act as code for merit or demerit. Is it an intrinsic demerit that a perfectly capable woman engineer needs a longer spanner, or is it a sign that spammers are not designed to be functional for her? In literature, have a look at some of the contemporary reviews of Wuthering Heights ("fit only for maidservants") to see how a book now recognised as an English classic was dismissed in gendered terms ... the language might have changed, but similar judgements, extrinsic to the quality of the writing itself, seem all too contemporary to me. It's those extrinsic judgments, at all sorts of levels, that I question. julesdog : 20 Apr 2011 3:49:27pm Keep questioning Alison because you are spot on. I guess as a writer who struggles to get published and who might take