Ghazlan Touati is an Algerian writer who is particularly interested in the position of women in Algeria today. She is the author of two short story collections: "Women Don't Do That", published in 2022 and 'A Bad Time to Buy Fish', published in Egypt in 2024. She has also published several articles on women's issues and culture.

A few days ago, the winner of the 2024/25 Booker Prize for Arabic Fiction was announced. And, as every year, I'm left with the same question: why hasn't a female writer won this prize? To be clear: this text doesn't provide an answer, nor does it claim to seek one. Rather, it is an attempt to explore the phenomenon of why women's literature lagging in Arab countries is struggling to escape its marginalised status.

Since the creation of the International Prize for Arab Fiction (commonly known as the "Arabic Booker Prize") in 2007 and the awarding of its first prize in 2008, only two women have been crowned among the winners. The first was in 2011, when a Saudi Arabian and a Moroccan author were awarded joint first prize - a unique case in the prize's history. And in 2018, the prize was awarded to a female Lebanese author. However, since the prize is awarded annually, this report reveals that over its sixteen editions, fourteen men but only two women have been honoured. This obvious imbalance raises a significant issue, which prompted me to go beyond a simple statistical reading to examine the underlying causes. There are several possible explanations for this under-representation of women. Perhaps female authors, due to a lack of confidence or a feeling of illegitimacy, refrain from participating. Perhaps publishing houses, when having to choose between proposing either a male or female-written novel for selection, almost systematically favour the former. Another possibility - one I find unconvincing - is that women are less likely to produce works deemed comparable to those of men in terms of style, narrative audacity, thematic depth or originality. However, this last hypothesis seems hardly tenable in light of the existence of a large number of talented Arabic-speaking female writers, whose literary quality is beyond doubt.

To shed some light on this imbalance, I have examined the shortlists, which typically comprise five to six novels. Since 2008, they have almost consistently featured one or perhaps two female writers. Only twice have three female authors made it to the shortlist, while one year, none were selected. To qualify this observation, I have extended the analysis to the longlists, where female writers' presence is more prominent. It's not uncommon to find four or five female novelists making the list, and in some exceptional cases, there is even parity - eight women for every eight men. These data clearly indicate women's active participation in the literary scene, as well as an Arabic-language novel production that, in quantitative terms, is maintained at a level comparable to, and sometimes even higher than, that of their male counterparts.

However, this initial visibility does not systematically translate into recognition at the highest level. This observation led me to question the role of the juries, renewed each year and made up, as a rule, of five members. From 2008 to 2014, the selection committees included just one woman each. It was only later that we saw a slight change, with juries comprising two, then three women, and only in one year were women in the majority (four out of five). Yet even then, only one female author reached the final, and the prize once again went to a man.

Thus, the data collected suggests that neither a lack of female participation nor systematic under-representation on selection committees is sufficient to explain the observed discrepancy. The problem seems to lie elsewhere - perhaps in the literary evaluation criteria themselves, in the implicit expectations of the publishing industry, or even in deeply rooted symbolic representations that tend to favour, consciously or unconsciously, a certain male conception of the legitimate author. So what is the problem? Why does a woman writer so rarely win?

The question raised here cannot be answered univocally. Rather, its complexity calls for a nuanced approach that eludes any attempt to reduce it to a few immediate or apparent causes. Attempting to simplify the analysis would be to misjudge the density of the dynamics, giving in to premature reductionism. No, such a phenomenon calls for an attitude of intellectual vigilence, suspension of judgment, and a sincere desire to understand. On a purely literary level, it is essential to remember that  juries' decisions are based primarily on aesthetic and stylistic criteria; ie judgments of taste. And yet, taste naturally eludes objectivity: it is personal, malleable, influenced by individual and collective sensibilities. Taste does not emerge from nothing: it is formed from a wide mix of influences - social contexts, the prevailing literary canon, the implicit or explicit expectations of the readership and the tensions between conformity and transgression.

Each member of the jury thus finds himself the bearer of a symbolic universe, an intellectual training and a system of values that guide his readings. This deeply subjective filter makes the act of selection eminently personal, sometimes opaque. Furthermore, the fact that the jury's deliberations are very rarely made public, meaning they evade any form of external scrutiny, further increases the difficulty of a well-founded analysis. Nevertheless, based on the limited information available - extracts from reports, interviews or indiscretions - certain recurring criteria can be identified: artistic originality, freedom of tone, thematic density, narrative mastery, stylistic elaboration, as well as the critical or existential significance of the subject matter.

These standards apply, it should be remembered, regardless of gender. The texts written by women and included in the final selections undoubtably meet these imperatives, with their narrative force, formal richness and depth of subject matter. This means that they have been assessed with the same exacting standards as the works of their male counterparts, and match their literary quality. The explanation for the imbalance can not therefore be sought in terms of content, technique or stylistic power.

In fact, several of these novels by female authors have resonated strongly with both readers and critics, far beyond the Booker Prize itself. Among the most significant examples are Le Désastre de la Maison des Notables by Amira Ghenim, Beyond Paradise by Mansoura Ez-Eldin, The American Granddaughter by Inaam Kachachi, and Le Tanki by Alia Mamdouh - all outstanding works that fully embody the ambition and richness of contemporary female literary output in Arabic. Here too, I find myself at an impasse when I try to explain this lag purely objectively. Therefore, I have to consider non-objective causes, which are not directly related to the prize itself, but to the general relationship to women, to women writers, to their presence and activity in the public sphere, without being subject to social or political judgment.

It is obvious - and this requires no proof - that women today enjoy extensive freedom, that they are bold, that they write and publish abundantly, as much or even more than men, at least quantitatively. Yet the attitude towards them remains unchanged: women writers are expected to remain in the background, waiting for favourable conditions - the right place, the right time, the right opportunity. Even within the selection committees, this mentality is evident. It doesn't manifest itself explicitly, but expresses itself in the form of disguise, or acts on an unconscious level, rooted in a collective imagination structured by long-standing social norms. This reflects the place that women continue to occupy in our societies: although they are educated, work, and constitute the majority in certain sectors, positions of power are still largely held by men. The literary field is no exception to this logic: this symbolic power remains in the hands of men, and every effort seems to be made to preserve their monopoly - no longer by direct and brutal means, but by more subtle methods, often accepted and even internalised by the women themselves.

One such strategy is to include a significant number of novels written by women in the first selections. This gesture is perceived, by the writer and those around her, as a form of recognition: validation of her work, proof of her integration into the milieu. But the recognition seems to end there. Female writers must not win for several consecutive years, nor must they monopolise the prize, as is currently the case for men. In a way, this is reminiscent of the model of colonial schools: they allowed native children to study up to a certain level, before directing them towards vocational training, in order to deny them access to the prestigious positions reserved for the colonist - the holder of a higher status inaccessible to the native.

It seems, consciously or not, that everything is being done to maintain a distance between women and the spheres of symbolic power, particularly in the literary field. The very idea that women writers could become the figureheads of Arab literature is enough to arouse widespread discomfort within society. It is this latent unease that explains, among other things, why some women on literary juries hesitate to support female authors, for fear of being accused of gender solidarity. This fear of appearing biased sometimes leads them, too, to adopt the dominant codes of thought, to the point of excluding other women in order to preserve their own position in an environment still governed by male thinking.

Another obstacle frequently noted is the tendency to reduce women's writing to so-called personal or "feminine" themes: the body, intimacy, sexuality, pain, love or revolt. These subjects, often sidelined by male writers, are deemed secondary, as they fall outside the traditional framework of so-called "serious" or "universal" literature. This implicit classification relegates the works of women writers to a peripheral position, as if they addressed only a part of humanity - women - and not the human race as a whole. This view of women's writing is based on an artificial hierarchy of subjects and on a persistent prejudice: that committed literature is necessarily less noble, less literary. As a result, any work tackling issues linked to the female condition is suspected of lacking depth or aesthetic ambition. This reasoning, often invoked without justification, actually serves to disqualify. And yet, many of today's female novelists eschew these labels, exploring bold narrative forms and innovative questioning with great skill. But despite this inventiveness, their work is rarely fully recognised in the cultural sphere.

It's therefore no surprise that generation after generation continues to wonder about the absence of major female figures in the literary or philosophical field of the Arab world. While it's a question that frequently arises, the obvious mechanisms of exclusion are not questioned. All too often, it is forgotten that women have long been prevented from writing, or forced to do so in secret, in precarious conditions, and without real recognition. And even when they did produce works, these were rarely recorded in historical accounts, written for the most part by men who downplayed or ignored women's works.

To conclude these reflections, I'd like to make one final remark about the prize itself, more specifically about the recurring choices made by the juries regarding preferred themes in the Arab Booker selections. The themes are broadly distributed as follows: first are historical subjects - what we now refer to as the "historical novel" - be it colonial, contemporary or Islamic history; then come historical novels with fantastical elements; third , albeit more marginally, are political novels; and finally, there are occasional, but extremely rare, entries dealing with autobiography, the epistolary genre, or those tackling societal or psychological issues. This thematic orientation, while undoubtedly unintentional, is nonetheless problematic - even worrying - in a context where winning a prize, or even just a mention on a list (whether long or short), is often the only way for a writer to establish a livelihood in the literary world. Some go so far as to display the words "shortlist winner" on the cover of their book. I've never known what that actually means - or what it's supposed to mean - but if this is now the only way for a name to emerge, for a work to be read, then so be it.

This text was originally published on May 2, 2025 in the Lebanese newspaper Almodon.