It’s a woman’s world

What better way to celebrate International Women’s Day than to announce the all-women longlist for the Orange Prize, the £30,000 bonanza that awaits women authors, much to the chagrin of their male counterparts?
This year it has rained historical novels — starting from the Homeric period to World War II, there’s a list of 20 glittering authors, which includes five debut novels and four “seconds”. Joanna Trollope, as the chair of the jury, has already ploughed through all 143 submissions. An author herself, she remarked, obviously impressed with the quality, “Fiction is a way into life’s great dilemmas” and found that women were “extraordinarily unafraid” to enter that emotional space.

The Orange Prize has been known to create a great buzz around the winning book — and the presence this time of established authors such as Emma Donoghue and Ali Smith will make the competition much tougher. The authors include those from the UK, America, Sweden and Canada. One of them, Madeline Miller, has taken 10 years to complete her book, The Song of Achilles.
No doubt this longlist will lead to another round of betting on the likely outcome. I would thus like to lay a wager on Ann Patchett for her book, State of Wonder. Not because I know that she will win (though I certainly hope she does), but because I have shared a stage with her at the Hay literary festival, and I was astonished to find how much the two of us, our books and their female protagonists had in common. Even though our writing styles and plots were completely different, I got a real spooky sense of déja vu when I met her. How did we, coming from such different backgrounds, have such similar thoughts? To add to the coincidences, Hay was also where I met Joanna Trollope as we were all staying at the same hotel, and she had mentioned in a newspaper interview that at that time she was reading my book. So, having accidentally bumped into some of the Orange Prize participants and judges, I shall take renewed interest in the longlist, and the prize!

Meanwhile, Prime Ministers, former and present, have all jumped onto the gender bandwagon on International Women’s Day — each being more politically correct than the other.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is trying for a stricter law to safeguard women from “unwanted verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person, in particular when creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”. And, according to campaigners who have been fighting for the law, punishable offences could even include wolf whistles and sexist comments.
The legislation would also allow the easy annulment of forced marriages and has already been enacted in over 18 countries in the European Union. But will the new law strike terror in the hearts of Britain’s roadside Romeos? Once upon a time the “whistle” was seen as a compliment, but no more, as there could be other unpleasant connotations. The British Crime Survey has an estimate of 120,000 incidents of stalking, of which less than half have been actually registered with the police in recent years. A negligible number of offenders received a custodial sentence, and only 10 per cent were imposed a fine or given a probation order. Campaigners hope that things will change and the new legislation will have a positive impact on the life and security of women.

N no column would be complete without at least mentioning Siobhan Benita — one of the more interesting new candidates for the upcoming mayor’s election. Ms Benita may not be exactly setting the Thames on fire, but she is creating a ripple of interest in the Asian community as her mother had come to the UK in 1959 from India. Standing as an independent, the former civil servant hopes that the stranglehold of the two main parties over the mayor’s post will be diminished if she wins. Displaying a canny knack in identifying the freebies that might propel her to victory, Ms Benita has already declared that she will freeze fares for public transport at current levels, introduce a monthly “free London” day in which Londoners would travel free and get loads of discounts on the high street, and will make London the best Wi-Fi enabled city in the world.
She claims that the early positive influences in her life were her parents from whom she learnt “unconditional” kindness, and so, perhaps, if elected, she will improve the marginalised areas of London. Interestingly, she has experience of both the government and the private sector, working with former Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell and businessman Peter Jones on a joint initiative on innovation.
The only problem with Ms Benita might be that she sounds too “normal”: both the main contenders — present mayor Boris Johnson and ex-mayor Ken Livingstone — have carefully nurtured attention-grabbing eccentricity. But we wish Ms Benita luck as it would be great if London got a mayor of Indian origin.

The writer can be contacted at kishwardesai@yahoo.com