The (in)visibilization of women in the press specializing in literature: an analysis of the presence of women writers in Spanish literature supplements

Abstract

This paper aims to dissect the presence of female writers in the main four cultural supplements of Spanish reference press: Babelia (El país), Cultura|s (La vanguardia), El cultural (El mundo) and ABC cultural (ABC). For this, we analyzed the “books of the year” recommended between 2010 and 2021 (n = 1,286), as well as the juries in charge of elaborating these ranks. The results show the subsidiary role reserved for women in this sphere of cultural informtion: they barely author 25.3% of the selected books, although some degree is progress is observed in the historical series, after going from 4.8% in 2011 to 37.8% in 2020. The increase in the presence of women in the juries has contributed to this phenomenon –the correlation between ratio of women in both lists being statiscally significant (rs = 0.647, p < 0.001)–, together with the commitment of supplement such as Babelia and Cultura|s to literature written by women. On the contrary, there still seem to be pockets of exclusion in El cultural and ABC cultural, which reduce the visibility of work of female writers in Spain. According to our findings, women authors stand out for their youth (they are between 8 and 20 years younger than men, depending on the indicator), cosmopolitism (there are more foreign female writers, especially American, than Spanish) and origin (mainly, Madrid and Barcelona). This article evinces the collective imaginary, settled for centuries, by which literature was considered a men’s affair, and reflects on the role of cultural journalism and its prescriptive function when it comes to breaking down gender stereotype –a task that, in view of the data provided in this paper, is still far from been completed.