This is a great time for writing by women – so why are we still considered second-rate?

The cliche dies hard: women are emotional; we please

Do men learn from women? Often. Do they admit it publicly? Rarely, even today. Let’s stick to literature. No matter how hard I try, I can’t think of many male writers who have said that they were in any way indebted to the work of a woman writer. Among Italians only one comes to mind, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author of The Leopard, who wrote that he had benefited from reading Virginia Woolf. I could list quite a few great male writers who either belittle their female colleagues, or attribute to them a capacity only to write banal, trifling stories – of marriage, children, love affairs; cheap romances and sentimental novels.

Recently, things have been changing, but not very much. For example, when some renowned male writer says in private, or in public, that we women writers are good, I would like to ask: are we as good as you, better than you, or good only within the context of books written by women? That is, have we broken out of the literary women’s space we are confined to (and not only by the market)? Or have we overturned literature in general and its values?

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘People who are enemies for no reason fascinate me'

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