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By Kang Hyun-kyung
History was written by men. Most "great minds" about whom we were taught in school are men. Male dominance continues today even though an increasing number of women have challenged the status quo and made their mark in fields that have long been the domain of men.
Mason Currey, author of two books "Daily Rituals: How Artists Work" (2013) and "Daily Rituals: Women at Work" (2019), says the dominance of male figures in almost all fields, including creative areas, reflects that history has not been a level playing field, particularly for women, and the unfair competition still continues in some countries.
Throughout history, he said women have been actively stymied in their efforts to make creative work central to their lives because expressing themselves through writing or artwork has not been considered a thing for women.
"Many of the men enjoyed elaborate, detailed daily routines, with set times for working, editing, napping, walking, socializing and so on," he said in an email interview with The Korea Times. "By contrast, fewer women had the luxury of a set routine at all. So many creative women throughout history have had to fight just to get to the work ― to carve out the time in the midst of all their other obligations. And then they've also had to work harder and longer to get recognized and get their work in front of a large audience."
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| Mason Currey, author of "Daily Rituals: Women at Work" / Courtesy of Rebecca Veit |
Currey's book "Daily Rituals: Women at Work" was recently published in Korean. The book covers the work habits of 131 women writers, artists and performers and how they managed to pull off creative work through effective time management.
"Women at Work" is a follow-up to Currey's 2013 book which is "a collection of brief profiles of the day-to-day working lives of novelists, poets, painters, composers and philosophers."
Currey said he was determined to work on his second book to correct the gender imbalance in the first book in which a mere 27 out of 161 figures he uncovered were women. He said he learned a lot while researching and writing "Women at Work" for nearly two years.
"The most challenging part was also the most fun part: Digging though biographies, interviews, diaries, letters, and other sources for entertaining and instructive anecdotes about these women's daily lives," he said. "I was particularly inspired by Frida Kahlo, Octavia Butler, Janet Frame and Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell. These women faced a variety of obstacles and still managed to make brilliant work on a more or less daily basis."
Buttler (1947-2006), an African American science fiction writer, for example, encouraged writers to write every day whether they feel like it or not, saying "Screw inspiration."
Currey said Franz Kafka worked at an insurance firm by day and wrote fiction late at night.
Currey, a former assistant editor at a small architecture and design magazine in New York, said he came to take an interest in how artists and writers managed their time to pull off great works as, at the time, he was struggling to balance his day job and hobby_ blogging.
"I launched the blog while procrastinating on an article I was supposed to be writing for the magazine. The blog was really just a hobby, something I did on the side for my own interest."
About a year and a half later, his blog was discovered by a literary agent which later led to the publication of his first book.
The author said the overall improvement of the status of women would pave the way for more "brilliant and inspiring books, films, paintings and other works of art."
"I know for me personally, many of the most provocative and moving reading experiences I've had recently have come from books by women and the same holds true for art exhibitions. I think we're living in a golden age of women's art and writing. All of this creative potential had been dammed up and now it's starting to burst out," he said.
