Publishers announce push to fight ageism in women's fiction

We’ve all encountered our fair share of book passages that linger in our minds for years — decades — after we first encounter them.

One of those, for books reporter Alison Flood, is a scene in a woman over forty is rubbing moisturizer into her face and neck, worrying about her technique in doing so, and wondering whether a more diligent regime would’ve warded off her husband’s infidelity.

It’s a tired image repeated across literature, or so the majority of female readers over forty believe, according to a survey from Gransnet and HarperCollins — that of a somewhat pitiful, desperate, or confused middle-age woman.

The publishers revealed the results of that survey at The Bookseller Marketing and Publicity conference, along with an initiative to encourage writers to counter that cliché.

You can read more about the ageism in fiction survey on Gransnet’s website, and pick up recommendations for fiction that depicts older women positively in the Guardian.