In her introduction Ellison stated one of her aims was to find out whether the feminist movement was responsible for what she described as “a dramatic increase” in the number of women writers published in the 1980s. Had women begun to emerge from a cultural background that traditionally privileged male writers? And was that because women in the literary world had begun to see themselves differently, perhaps as more equal to their male counterparts?

What she discovered was that the women she spoke to did not attribute their success specifically to feminism, rather to persistence, discipline and hard work. Gender, however was a defining factor in relation to their work. The assumption prevailed that “what men did was central and what women did was peripheral”. To be described as a woman writer was seen as “being damned with faint praise”.

Thea Astley said, “I always felt that [men] wouldn’t read books written by women.” And Helen Garner said,“an act of will isn’t enough to break out of female conditioning”. Jean Bedford said, “men still have a stronger sense of themselves as people” and Olga Masters said “it seemed if you were born a male, you automatically became the person who could make the decisions.”

When asked how feminism had directly influenced her writing, Helen Garner said it had provided validation for her as a writer, a way of getting beyond what she called “a kind of female cringe”. She went on to say “I still have trouble, even now, with the thought that I’m not as worthy as a man”. Considering how her reputation as a writer with strongly individualistic views has skyrocketed in subsequent years, I doubt she’d feel the same today.

Interestingly, at the time of these interviews (1985) Garner had only published four books and when asked about her aspirations as a writer, she said:

“I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m never going to make much money out of writing. It’s fairly clear that I’m not going to be so famous that when I walk into a room everyone will know who I am.”

Whether she’s made much money or not I don’t know, but if she walked into a room today, I’m pretty sure every head would turn!

That these women still felt so strongly that they were inferior to men surprised me, given that the feminist movement had been going for several decades by then. Cultural conditioning clearly still maintained a stranglehold on women’s creativity.

It wasn’t just that women’s lack of self-worth inhibited how they saw themselves as writers. Social roles controlled their capacity to find the time and space in which to work. Freeing themselves from the demands of others became an emotionally, even morally loaded act.

Blanche d’Alpuget remarked “when I’m writing fiction I am emotionally and psychologically absent from other relationships. I don’t think there exists any man, or many men who will put up with that kind of thing from a woman.” And in regard to her son, who was twelve at the time “I’m emotionally absent from him, too, when I’m writing, and one tends to feel guilty.”

Kate Grenville also commented on this aspect of being a woman writer, saying “I wasn’t involved with anybody very seriously when I started to write. If I had been it would have been really difficult, because you have to spend so much time on your writing, and become really obsessed with it. You’re very boring and withdrawn … and if you were living with somebody, it would be extremely hard on them.”

Many of the women commented on the solitary nature of writing and how isolation, while important to the creative process, went against the grain of others’ expectations. Women (in most households) were the caretakers, the nurturers, the sharers, the organisers. Shutting themselves away was seen as an abdication of their responsibilities as women.

Gabrielle Lord said the solitariness was “very destructive of your relationships with other people … because of the preoccupation [with writing] you can neglect people badly, you can’t see clearly what other people can see, because you’re wandering around bemused.”

She also said, “There does seem to be almost a mutual exclusiveness … about whether you’re a woman in the normal terms of society, or whether you’re a creative woman.”

The unspoken message here was that if women had wives to facilitate the running of the household, look after the children, cook the meals, etc., they would feel much freer and less guilty about devoting themselves to their work.

Which brings to mind the Drusilla Modjeska book “Stravinsky’s Lunch”, a biography of the Australian artists Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington-Smith.

The title comes from an anecdote about the composer Igor Stravinsky, who made it a rule that his family eat meals in silence, lest he be distracted from concentrating on the composition of his latest symphony. It’s hard to imagine a woman telling her family to keep quiet at the dinner table so she could focus on a difficult passage of writing. Women were expected to manage as best they could. The result was usually compromise of one kind or another, and inevitably guilt.

Helen Garner also suggested women publishers were more likely than male publishers to support women’s books, giving the example of her first book “Monkey Grip” (published by Hilary McPhee and Di Gribble under their banner McPhee Gribble). She said that if she’d submitted it to a male publisher it “would have been thrown out immediately as too emotional, etc. etc.”

How books written by women were received, in comparison to those written by men, was also discussed. Thea Astley said “I can’t imagine a man on a plane being seen dead reading ‘The Home Girls’ …” She also related an incident that took place in 1970 when a male student of hers, on discovering that Henry Handel Richardson was a woman, refused to go on reading “The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney”.

That women writers tended to write about domesticity and what happens in kitchens and bedrooms (“female” subjects) was remarked on by several of the interviewees, who were concerned that their books as a result were perceived to be of lesser consequence than more “serious” books written by men.

In writing the above, it was difficult not to keep slipping into present tense, because I can’t help thinking that at least some of the issues raised by these writers are still relevant today. Short of doing an equivalent series of interviews with contemporary women writers (book idea!), or exhaustive research, it’s a question that’s hard to answer.

If you take just a cursory look at statistics and studies conducted in regard to gender bias in writing and publishing, it appears progress has been made but there’s still a way to go.

Gender bias and stereotyping of course are not restricted to women writers. Women in many fields deal with these barriers. Women’s roles are still largely dictated by cultural conditioning and while there’ve been great advances, cooking, cleaning, childcare and other domestic duties are still by and large considered the domain of women.

Representation, acknowledgement and visibility within the literary world still favour male authors and there may not be much individual women writers can do about that. What they can do however is be aware of the lingering and self-sabotaging idea that their writing is not as important, serious or worthwhile as that of men. It’s hard not to feel guilty when we prioritise our work over the demands of others, but until we recognise that our work is just as crucial as other responsibilities, our work will suffer and so will we.

Many of us today have rooms of our own and incomes of our own (if not from writing), so theoretically a career as a writer is within the reach of many women. Hopefully no-one today believes that (as Gabrielle Lord suggested thirty-eight years ago) there’s “a mutual exclusiveness” between being a woman and being a woman writer!