“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

Was Miles Franklin a fan of Lewis Carroll? She must undoubtedly have read Alice in Wonderland as a child. Perhaps its flights of fantasy inspired her to become one of Australia’s best-loved writers, after whom the country’s foremost literary award is named. After years of the prize being awarded to men, a group of women gathered in Readings bookshop on International Women’s Day 2011, decided something needed to be done. After all, 52% of the Australian population are women. There are many women writers. It was palpably unfair. They founded the Stella Prize, using Miles Franklin’s less well-known first name. The Prize was intended to advance the cause of women writers. Its foundational statement was clear:

“the Stella Prize is committed to recognising the best books by Australian women… Our judging terms are that the winning book be: excellent, original and engaging. By raising the profile of women writers, and celebrating their achievements, we hope to erode the self-perpetuating cycle of under-representation that confronts all women writers.” (Stella website) In the first few years of its existence, the Stella fulfilled this brief admirably. It raised the profile of women writers and encouraged the industry to reduce its embedded discrimination against women. Australian women writers felt for the first time that they had a champion.

Scroll forward to 2019, a short eight years on from the clarion call of the founding manifesto, and this appeared: “Regarding eligibility for the Stella Prize, we welcome authors who identify with Stella’s mission to celebrate Australian women’s writing in ways that reconcile with their understanding of their own gender identity. This includes trans women, non-binary and cis women writers. We do not require any statement beyond an author’s self identification and interpret entry to the prize as confirmation of that identification.” (Stella website)

This is part of an increasing trend in literary circles to award prizes at least partly on the basis of cultural diversity of the author, rather than specifically and solely on the literary merit of the work. In this case, the original intent has been abruptly bifurcated, rather like a snake’s tongue. Now the prize is not simply to acknowledge and promote ‘excellence’ in writing, by women. It is now to ‘celebrate’ women’s writing ‘in ways that reconcile with their understanding of their own gender identity’. No longer is the Prize awarded for writing that is (a) by a woman and (b) ‘excellent, original and engaging’. Now the book has to have something to do with the ‘gender identity’ of the author, and that gender identity has been expanded to include – well, anyone who is prepared to regard themselves as a woman, even if only for the purposes of entering a prize founded specifically for women.

It is all very well to expand the eligibility criteria in this way to be ‘inclusive’, perhaps, but can it be done without crashing headlong into the Prize’s foundational aim? Can a prize for ‘excellent’ writing by ‘women’ validly be awarded to persons who are, perhaps, women in name only, and whose writing has been selected on criteria other than excellence? Can the aim of gender inclusiveness really co-exist with the aim of promoting women, and women only? After all, the Stella was founded specifically in an environment in which men won most literary awards – and still do. The Prize committee apparently thinks so, although its perception of the original purpose of the Prize is malleable: “Executive director Jaclyn Booton said the prize sought to champion cultural change and it would fail its own mission if it reinforced gender binaries.” (https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/s-l-lim-the-first-non-binary-writer-up-for-stella-prize-since-entry-changes-20210303-p577hm.html) From championing women writers, the Prize has morphed into championing cultural change in  general. That was definitely not the original aim.

What writers can possibly be entering with the revised wording, who were not able to when the Prize was for women? Essentially, men. About 3% of Australians are LGBTI. This includes homosexual men and women, intersex (1.7%) and transgender (about 0.05%) people. Lesbians were always eligible under the original criteria. Presumably homosexual men will not consider entering. So it seems to be the fewer than 2% of Australians who are transgender or intersex. There are no statistics on how many in this group are authors, but the number of Australian authors who are intersex or transgender must be tiny indeed. The most recent Prize was awarded to a writer who identifies as non-binary. Despite this identification, they were perhaps originally female. That would entitle them to enter anyway, since the stipulation that the Prize was for women made no requirements about sexuality or gender roles.

This move, part of a far broader enthusiasm for giving primacy to gender roles, has attracted attention in a variety of quarters. The Independent commented: “While the judges’ gender-blind approach seems well meaning and fair, it’s deeply troubling that another gender has been made eligible for this prize, set up solely for women, without there appearing to have been a process for doing this, or a thought for the consequences.” (https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trans-author-womens-fiction-prize-a8810681.ht

This was a reference to the award of the UK Women’s Prize in 2019. That, too was awarded to a non-binary writer, and aroused concern.
“The broadened criteria for eligibility follows recent moves to make gender-specific literary prizes more inclusive. The shift followed the first-time longlisting of a non-binary trans author, Akwaeke Emezi, for the Women’s Prize in the UK in 2019. The Women’s Prize later restricted its conditions of entry to require writers to be “legally defined as a woman or of the female sex”, including providing proof through a birth certificate or a gender recognition certificate if necessary.

By contrast, Stella, an organisation established in 2012 [sic] to recognise and celebrate Australian female writers’ contribution to literature, states that entrants are not required to provide any statement of gender beyond self identification, and that it “interpret[s] entry to the prize as confirmation of that identification”.” (https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/mar/04/stella-prize-2021-finalists-span-the-gamut-of-human-enterprise-and-experience.’)

You say you’re a woman, you’re a woman. It seems that there’s not really much to being a woman – no biology, no life experience, no specific sentiments, skills or suffering. Anyone can be one.

These moves have not necessarily been welcomed by transgender and non-binary people. Jinghua Qian provides a useful analysis:

“As an AFAB nonbinary person, many feminist and women’s spaces welcome me – but often that welcome is itself a form of trans erasure, an insistence on seeing us as the genders we were assigned. I wrote about my uncomfortable relationship with feminist literary spaces for Feminist Writers Festivals. ‘I’m pretty accustomed to not feeling at home anywhere – this is often a good thing, a productive tension. The can of worms fertilises the soil. But whether it’s Feminist Writers Festival, Facebook writers’ groups, or other feminist literary initiatives like the Stella Prize, I think it’s important to remember that you can’t simply tweak the category of woman to accommodate nonbinary people. Nonbinary disturbs the foundations of binary gender because it’s supposed to. It’s intentionally an interruption, a question as well as an identity.’” (Walking away, backwards; or, woman-lite in women’s lit. https://jinghuaqian.com/2020/11/20/woman-lite-in-womens-lit/)

Ironically Readings bookshop, where literary women gathered a few years ago on International Women’s Day and conceived the idea of a prize for women writers, recently apologised – retrospectively – for having invited feminist Julie Bindel to an event to promote her latest book three years ago. The event was immensely popular, but Bindel seems to have become persona non grata.  She, like women writers in general, has been thrown under the bus. The importance of the 52% of women has been swept aside in favour of the importance of the fewer than 2% of intersex, transgender and non-binary people. And all this happens under the name of ‘inclusiveness’. The end result has been that once again, Australia’s women writers have no dedicated literary award. The Stella Prize, and women writers, have been engulfed by the quicksand of gender politics.