GRANTA AND THE FEMININE – THE INFlUENcE OF GENDER ON PUBlISHING OPTIONS

Granta has been, since its inception, an important literature-disseminating vehicle. With this analysis, we intend to understand the role women have been having as collaborators of this literary magazine. For this purpose, the 132 issues of Granta released between the fall of 1979 and the summer of 2015 were qualitatively analyzed. It was concluded that the presence of women as collaborators of Granta is clearly inferior and that the gender of collaborators seems to also have an influence over the theme and the literary genre to be published, but not over the opportunities given to emerging authors. The gender of the editors who select collaborators is also a weighty variable on the final panorama. Finally, the participation of women in Granta has shown a tendency to increase. kEywORDS Granta; gender; publication; literature; inequality. Introduction: Of Granta and the Objectives of this Analysis Granta – The Magazine of New Writing is, in its current form, a literary British magazine which has been dedicating itself to the promotion and diffusion both of already consecrated authors, but also of new authors who are still taking their first steps in the world of literature. Granta as we know it today appeared in 1979, with Bill Bufford as editor, with a fixed quadrienal format having been adopted as of 1983. Since 1979, 132 issues of Granta have been published, each with a different theme to which several writers dedicate themselves. All these issues have been analyzed in the context of this research paper, including works of fiction, essays, memoirs, poetry, interviews and artistic pieces hailing from a variety of countries. It is important, however, to keep in mind that, while in terms of the sort of literature they produce, the authors included in the many numbers of Granta don’t seem to work according to the repetitive and comfortable paradigm characteristic of cultural industries which Adorno (2003) theorized, they would eventually insert themselves in the scope of these same cultural industries, since they would start a literary career that would get them involved in the world of publishing. What this research paper intends is to analyze the participation that women have had as collaborators of Granta in the 36 years of its existence. In what pertains to methodology, a qualitative approach was adopted, based on the analysis of the contents of the summaries of the current 132 issues of Granta. Before the gathering of data and the establishment of conclusions (which brought to light issues that had not been previously considered), it was 1 M.A. Student in Publishing Studies, University of Aveiro: email: leonorrodrigues@ua.pt. 2 Professor in the PhD Program in Cultural Studies, Universities of Aveiro and Minho, email: mbaptista@ua.pt. 3 Assistant professor at the Potiguae University and postdoctoral student at the University of Aveiro, email: fneymatos@ua.pt. 471 expected that the number of female collaborators of Granta would be relatively low when compared to the number of male collaborators. It was also thought, taking into account the theme-oriented character of the publication, that the number of female authors would be higher in themes socially considered feminine (such as the topics of Home, Children or Love Stories), and that their participation would be lower in themes socially considered masculine (here topics related to war, politics, sports or economy were included). It was further assumed that women would mostly work with fiction, while men would primordially prefer essays and non-fiction in general. Finally, it was anticipated that there would be a bigger percentage of male collaborators still unknown, as opposed to a number of female collaborators still unacknowledged that was expected to be smaller. Theoretical Framework: Of (In)Equality and Gender-Based Stereotype Beere, King, Beere and King (1984) defined gender-role equality as the ability to view individuals regardless of their gender. Thereby, no one, either male or female, would be discriminated against based on gender, and the opportunities that a person would be presented with and judgment of his or her true capabilities would not be dependent on any perception made biased by gender. However, a careful evaluation of current reality, even after the strong and demanding feminist movements of the 60s through to the 80s, will showcase the fact that this state of equality still hasn’t been established. There are, in fact, several studies that corroborate this notion on various levels. Steinpreis, Anders and Ritzke (1999) exposed the way how, in job-searching situations, with equal CVs, men end up being favored. Eigenberg and Whalley (2015) concluded that parity is still nonexistent in academic publishing by analyzing the publication of women in journals on the criminology field. Goldin and Rouse (2000) analyzed the discrimination to which women were submitted during auditions for orchestras, even concluding that the number of hired women would increase when gender-blind auditions were held. Eagly and Karau (2002) dealt with the issue of the glass ceiling and the reasons for which women still see themselves prevented from reaching jobs involving great power and responsibility. Ceci, Williams and Barnett (2009) sought to understand the still worryingly low number of women working in fields related to science. A reason that would explain why this discriminative framework still remains could be the prevalence, even nowadays, of gender stereotypes. Williams, Satterwhite and Best (1999) believed that gender stereotypes would have their roots in the different psychological characteristics attributed to men and women, with these stereotypes being either universal or specific to a given culture. The psychological characteristics we attribute to members of both genders will then influence the way we view their capabilities and, consequently, the way we evaluate their suitability for certain tasks or roles – which would greatly explain the aforementioned situations. The wrongfulness of many of these stereotypes is confirmed by Ross and Geffner (1980), who mention the research of Pheterson, Kiesler and Goldberg (1971) in which it was understood that, while men and women were evaluated in an egalitarian way when their work was already amply recognized, women would still be discriminated against when they were still relatively unknown. Therefore, for women, the problem would be in GRANTA AND THE FEMININE – THE INFLUENCE OF GENDER ON PUBLISHING OPTIONS