The most female finalists in the award’s history. What took it so long?

It should be no surprise that many of the most creative, ambitious and far-reaching novels this year were written by women. For the first time in its 55-year history the Booker prize shortlist, announced this week, includes five female authors and only one man. Since its inception in 1969, the most prestigious award for a novel written in English has been won by 18 female writers (Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood have both won twice).

And yet it is a truth universally acknowledged that women both write and buy the majority of fiction. In 1996 the Women’s (initially known as the Orange) prize was created after there were no female authors shortlisted in 1991, and only one for the following four years. As its founder and director Kate Mosse pointed out, the problem wasn’t simply the absence of women, but that nobody seemed to notice. “It’s time for the Paulettes and Paulinas”, the novelist Sara Collins, one of this year’s Booker judges, joked, referring to the three Pauls – Paul Murray, Paul Harding and the winner, Paul Lynch – on last year’s male-dominated shortlist.