We Should All Read Books by Women

10 Women Authors that Everyone will Love

As children, when we chattered on too long into the night, Buwa would peek into the room and smile, “Who are these Jane Austen characters?”

We giggled at the fancy term.

Until my sister read her first Austen book, and answered, “There is nothing wrong in being a Jane Austen character! They just reflect their times.”

Indeed, there is nothing wrong. In fact, it is a privilege to be able to read, understand and appreciate the depth of women’s writing and the expanse of their ideas.

It was several years before I would understand the bias against women’s writing (and in extension, their characters). A popular bookstore raised an outcry when it shared how men are quick to admit they do not read books by women, and a research revealed a price disparity in men’s and women’s books of up to 45 percent.

It is not only dry data. In conversation, male acquaintances are quick to defend themselves and say they read and like books by women. Yet why is it that their book recommendations and references are dominated by men, and names of women do not flow from the tongue as smoothly as the men’s?

We never feel a need to categorize men’s writing, but how quickly books by women are tied…