{"id":3725,"date":"2012-12-16T16:51:05","date_gmt":"2012-12-16T05:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stumblingpast.wordpress.com\/?p=3725"},"modified":"2022-08-04T00:25:59","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T00:25:59","slug":"the-year-that-was-australian-women-writers-challenge-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/2012\/12\/16\/the-year-that-was-australian-women-writers-challenge-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"The Year that was: Australian Women Writers\u2019 Challenge 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"LogoAt the beginning of the year I reflected on my reading habits. Female authors do not receive as many reviews as male authors both in Australia <\/a>and other western countries<\/a>.\u00a0 How many books by women authors had I read in the last year?\u00a0 I was shocked to find that in 2011 I had read only one book written by a female historian. With the help of the Australian Women Writers\u2019 Challenge<\/a> I rectified this imbalance by reading and reviewing more books written by women.\u00a0 So where has the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge led me this year?<\/p>\n

Not only did I read, I pondered.\u00a0 I wondered whether the imbalance of reviews varied according to genre.\u00a0 I have not seen any statistics regarding this so I did a survey of my own.\u00a0 Having limited resources to do such a survey I decided to look at two years of book reviews by three academic history journals.\u00a0 In some respects the results of this examination were as I expected but I was surprised by one of the findings.\u00a0 You can read about my survey here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In response to a comment by prominent book blogger, Lisa Hill<\/a>, I decided to make a list of histories written by Australian women<\/a> to help people who were looking for histories written by Australian women.\u00a0 Oh dear, the task turned out to be way more difficult than I expected as it descended into the murky territory of determining who is Australian.\u00a0 You can have a chuckle at my expense by reading my post, It\u2019s Not Just a List<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I had only written three book reviews on my blog prior to the start of the year so I was cautious about how many books I committed to read for the Challenge.\u00a0 I promised to read six histories written by Australian women and to reviewing three of these.<\/p>\n

By the end of the year I had read and reviewed more than what I had signed up for.\u00a0 It was easier to do than I thought it would be and I thoroughly enjoyed participating.\u00a0 Here is a list of history books that I reviewed for the Challenge:<\/p>\n