Why Create a Gender Bias Stating it as Women’s Writing — Mridula Garg

An erudite panel comprising of Mridula Garg as chair, and Geetanjali Shree and Varsha Adalja as discussants shared their views on Women’s Writing in Indian Languages. According to Garg, “Writings or writer’s should never be discriminated based on gender bias. A writer or a poet is just that, but creating a divide by saying that she is a women’s writer and rather than talking about the genre of the written expression, focus is laid on the fact that she is a female writer. No writer or creation is the same, as they stem from different emotions, language, experiences, expressions or feelings thus when talking about women’s writing, it acts as a barrier to the growth of literature.” She further added that she has travelled across the world for literary events for speaking on a wide array of topics covering modernism, hedonism, how creative works grow, but it was only the Sahitya Akademi that has chosen such a derogatory topic by creating a bias for women, which should thus be changed and done away with.

The fact is that a writer is never gendered, the work they produce is not written with the intention that she is a woman who is a writer. It’s quite irrational to classify writers as male, female, non-binary etc., until and unless a study is conducted to analyse the perspective of different genders and the way they view the world.

Varsha Adalja, from Gujarat, shared that as a writer she has covered various topics and above all she likes to write about them by experiencing first hand. For instance she went to the prison, a lepers colony and has worked among adivasis to enrich her understanding of the situation and then she sits down to write. She felt that the subject a writer chooses is never gendered, it is an experience without the thought of gender, so a writer is just a writer and not a gender.

Geetanjali Shree steered the conversation in the direction of understanding a ‘women’ writer sharing that, “She is just like any other writer, who may have written on multiple topics, engaged in discourses which require enough information regarding the subject, so this means that they are just like any “other” writer. The meaning of “other” writer in this discourse was taken up by male writers, it is automatically assumed that a writer would usually be male and a writer can only be a woman if genre identification is attached to the writer, this is unfair for the women.”

This doesn’t disregard the fact that many females write about their experiences, surroundings and use fellow women as inspiration for works but that is the same with every writer, who take inspiration from their surroundings, and pen down their experiences, as they talk love, feelings, expressions or the environment. With what logic is the profession being gendered or with what reason are certain genres prescribed to genders.

Shree also shared that, “Winning the Booker Prize was just one moment of celebration, but when the spotlight falls on a book, we should not look up towards the light, but where the light falls as there are many more literary works around that one book, which are worth your time and definitely deserves readers.”

The panel shared their ideas and views about topics that often gender biased is imposed on women with a certain non-existent expectation from them, they also spoke about the work the usually publish.