Student Life
The death of the male novelist or the birth of the feminist?
A trend has emerged in recent years which centres on a worry that male authors are being decreasingly published and read, whilst women have begun to dominate the industry. This trend links closely with the controversial intention of Jude Cook to launch Conduit Books, which would aim, at least initially, to publish solely books written by men. This trend, in calling itself “the death of the male novelist”, perhaps exaggerates the situation at hand by implying the total loss of male authors. How much truth is there to this trend?
In reality, the situation is not so dire as that. When looking closer, it turns out that almost every article written on this topic refers to a single study completed by Joel Waldfogel, an economist, in 2025. Whilst a comprehensive, 42-page study, it does not take a genius to know that, for a reliable conclusion to be drawn, ideally, more than one source of proof should be drawn on. In addition, the World Economic Forum reports that “Waldfogel determined female and male authorship by first name, which risked misclassifying some authors”. It is notable, too, that while many articles cite Waldfogel’s study as proof that women so harshly outnumber men in the publishing industry, they never appear to give actual statistics, and this is telling when looking at the results yielded from his study.
He breaks book sales down by sector, and compares the percentage of books authored by women in that sector to the number of sales of the same books. In only two sectors do women outperform men in terms of authorship: romance, where women produce 78.3% of the work, and “Cookbooks, Food & Wine”, where women produce 51.4%. The latter is close enough to half that the split is essentially even, meaning that there is only one sector in which women author a significantly increased number of books compared to men.
The belief that women take up more space in society than they actually do is an idea that has risen in recent decades, perhaps due to the increasingly visible presence of the feminist movement. Some may see this as a threat to the current state of society and lash out against women’s representation in every sector. Despite this, women’s texts produce over half of the sales in ten of the 41 total categories. Perhaps, then, the answer lies not in the authors themselves but in the publishers and purchasers of books.
Although there is a more equal weighting between male and female authors than is often assumed, many statistics make it clear that women comprise the majority of both publishing staff and readers. In 2019, women made up 78% of publishing staff (although this number drops in more senior roles) and, in 2024, 65% of women read fiction compared to 35% of men. Perhaps it makes sense that more published texts are by women, given that it is a female-dominated industry in the sense of both the workers and the consumers.
However, it is easy to pick holes in this argument. For one, it has been shown that, whilst women read books equally by men and women, men tend to read books written by men. If the majority of readers are women, and women tend to read books by men and women equally, then the fact that there is an approximately equal number is a good reflection of the population’s reading habits.
There is also something to be said for the importance of men’s representation within texts. Perhaps the sales of texts by women are elevated despite not making up a ridiculous proportion of the total because men are lacking in healthy representation within texts. Although diversity is important within reading, it is also important for everyone to read texts which represent their own situation, to feel seen. Men are able to find far more representation in past texts than women are, but this cannot be used as a blanket statement. Identity is intersectional, and men who are part of marginalised groups would be hard-pressed to find literature that represents them. Even people who would find their demographic in the old-fashioned canon would likely not feel represented by it: a man living in the 21st century would likely not relate to the experiences of men in a Dickens novel, for example.
Men’s representation in modern novels is important, but there is some doubt as to whether this representation is waning. Although it is taken as such, Waldfogel’s study does not seem to imply the death of the male novelist, and neither does some research into winners of major literary prizes over the last half-century. The Booker Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for example, both list their historical winners going back decades. These lists reveal that perhaps it is not so new a concept that women and men be on equal grounds regarding publishing and literary prizes.
In 1970, three men and three women were on the shortlist for the Booker Prize, and Bernice Rubens, a woman, won the prize. There are plenty of other examples of women being nominated with more equal weighting to men than is often assumed throughout the histories of these prizes, in similar ratios to those seen today. Whilst men have often dominated nominations, perhaps the extent to which they have done so is less than is often assumed.
Perhaps changes to the publishing industry are not borne of genuinely overwhelming shifts in gender splits, but instead in the eye of the beholder. In recent years, feminism as a movement has become increasingly vocal and proud in the Western world. Women have been present in the publishing industry and in literary prize lists for decades, yet it is only now that feminism – in particular, the visibility of women in the arts sector – is making its voice increasingly heard that society has begun to worry that the male novelist is a dying species.
This is not an isolated situation, and is mirrored in other areas of society. People are afraid of the increasing gender quotas which aim to make gender divides within companies narrower. The FTSE Women Leaders Review shows that women are still underrepresented within companies at 43%, yet fears abound about whether gender quotas are damaging the quality of the workplace. The anxiety that women are gaining power within the world is not specific to books, and has risen along with the visibility of feminism in the last few decades.
Perhaps people have an issue not with women’s fiction being published in large quantities, but more with the way it cyclically supports and is supported by the vocality and power of the feminist movement. This backlash against progressive movements has always existed, and often involves strong responses to a fear of forward movement within society. The idea that male novelists are a dying breed is not founded in truth, but in anxiety over women gaining equal voices to men. The death of the male novelist as a concept exaggerated by the dramaticisms of its name, which fails to stand up under investigation.
St Edmund Hall has opened new, sustainability-focused accommodation in Norham Gardens, one of Oxford’s most affluent neighbourhoods.
The College describes the buildings, which took three years to construct, as an “exemplar” of sustainability. Designed by architects Wright & Wright LLP, they are certified with a Passivhaus standard, widely regarded as the industry benchmark for energy efficiency, and were built using “sustainably sourced and low-embodied carbon materials”. According to a press release on the Teddy Hall website, the buildings will use 70% less energy than the typical modern building.
It contains 127 en-suite study rooms, split across three new buildings: Willis House, Ashton House, and Elliott House, on the nearly 50-year-old Norham St Edmund site. The buildings, which back onto University Parks, are powered at least in part by solar panels and are heated by air-source heat pumps.
The rooms include heated towel racks, big double beds, and dimmable lights. Despite the luxury, the College kept the nightly rate in line with the rest of its Norham housing. The College told Cherwell that it “recognises the need to keep rents as low as possible” and that its accommodation costs are “below the median of all Oxford colleges”. By that standard, tenants are expected to pay around £30 a night.
Rooms on the site will be reserved for Teddy Hall returning undergraduates. They will not be available to postgraduates and, by extension, not be offered through the Oxford University Collegiate Accommodation System, now in its second year of opening college rooms to students from other colleges. The accommodation will allow Teddy Hall to accommodate all undergraduates for their whole degree.
The development’s outdoor spaces are boasted as climate-resilient and biodiverse, with landscaped gardens and lawns. For budding geographers and biologists, the most intriguing feature may be an ecology pond.
Chancellor William Hague said in a press release: “Norham St Edmund is a world-leading blueprint for future student accommodation projects and sustainable building design, both in Oxford and beyond. I look forward to seeing it serve a thriving college community for generations to come.
Human rights experts called for stronger legal protections against the risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI) at an Oxford AI and Human Rights Summit, with speakers arguing that human rights standards must be embedded into AI governance and technology.
The summit was hosted at the newly redeveloped Rhodes House in Oxford and organised by the Institute for Ethics in AI. It built upon Professor Yuval Shany’s consultation on a white paper, published in 2025, on the need for and feasibility of an international AI Bill of Human Rights, which proposes ways to adapt existing human rights standards so as to better address some of the unique challenges posed by AI systems and their uses.
An opening video address from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk outlined how AI policy can keep pace with a fast-developing technology. He said that “great power demands responsibility on the same scale, and when the two don’t match, we have a problem”. Corporate control, he explained, means that AI policy stretches beyond existing national borders. He continued to praise this summit for bringing together leaders and representatives at the forefront of the discussion.
Speakers called on the UK government to establish legislation, recalling Labour’s manifesto commitment to an AI Bill of Human Rights. The panellists broadly agreed on the importance of human rights, but appeared less aligned on what enforcement should look like in practice.
In an exclusive interview, Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, told Cherwell that political short-termism Continued on pg. 2 risks undermining efforts to address the long-term consequences of AI. “We are infected across our societies with shorttermist responses to the great issue of our societies and politics,” he said, adding that electoral cycles make it difficult for politicians “to think beyond the next election”.
O’Flaherty also noted that younger generations no longer take the international human rights system for granted. “There is no longer an assumption that the human rights system is safe, that it will survive,” he told Cherwell. He argued that political leaders increasingly treat human rights selectively, saying: “Increasingly, leaders are treating human rights, if they are respected at all, as an a la carte buffet. We take those rights because they serve our goal. We’ll ignore others because they get in the way.
The summit also heard concerns about the effects of AI-generated misinformation on communities that may have limited access to, or awareness of, the technology itself. An audience question asked human rights experts to consider the impacts of AI on populations, such as those in India, who might be unaware of its existence. The focus on the impact of AI on populations in developing countries more vulnerable to the power of big tech was a key theme of the summit.
Eileen Carter from the South African Human Rights Commission warned that underrepresentation of African languages in large language models could exacerbate existing inequalities. She also raised concerns about the effects of misinformation and deepfakes on elections, referring to more than 360 deaths associated with unrest and the amplification of narratives.
The third panel, which offered a civil society perspective on promoting human rights in AI systems, offered some hope. Across all speakers, the potential for AI to transform the beliefs that underpin human rights, including the rights to water, education, and an interpreter, was debated. When asked about AI’s potential to unravel and alter the definition of human rights, such as what is included in the ‘right to education’ O’Flaherty told Cherwell: “The damage that can be done by AI has hit more dramatically and more visibly than perhaps any other sector within education through the phenomenon of cognitive loss, of cognitive transfer. We’re only beginning to realise the extent to which we have allowed education to be fundamentally undermined for an entire generation.
“It’s time to seize that now and engage it. I’m not sure that the classic understanding of the human right to education is particularly well-framed for this extraordinary development.”
In a discussion on different countries’ regulatory approach to AI, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, professor at Brown University and former AI advisor to US President Joe Biden, argued that AI systems should not be treated as inevitable developments beyond human control. “We continue, I think, to talk about AI as a thing that emerged out of nowhere that we just have to deal with,” he said. “We forget that these aren’t coming from an alien planet and they were built by entities that choose to build them in a certain way.” He called for pressure on technology companies to make different choices about how AI systems are developed.
Questions of accountability also emerged during discussions about AI’s potential to improve access to justice. Research presented by Philippa Webb said that only 10% of people who have access to a lawyer can get one while there are thousands of bookings for an interpreter in a court covering 150 languages. However, this progress is not cemented as “general-purpose chatbots hallucinate 58% of the time on a legal task”. The use of AI in moderating legal proceedings raised fundamental questions about humanity and authority. Thompson Chengeta from Liverpool John Moores University said that “human rights is the last line of defence so when we say we want a human rights based governance… human rights is not an idea, it is an obligation. There is a gap that can only be recovered by a legally binding instrument”.
The event culminated in a panel offering an industry perspective. Co-host Dr Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green questioned representatives from Meta, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Michael Karimian, who works in digital diplomacy at Microsoft, discussed the role of private sectors in engaging with AI, defining corporate responsibility as something which “provides transparency and identified risks”.
All companies supported having formal programmes to ensure that they have an AI policy in place. Within their own companies, they suggested protective measures such as specialised training to ensure that policies, such as whistleblowing, are understood. Alexandria Walden from Google described how consultations with stakeholders could be used to identify when the product breached users’ boundaries. These assessments, according to OpenAI’s spokesperson, “feedback into tangible technical input” and “benchmark it”.
Fundamentally, understanding the rationale behind human rights is imperative, though lacking. Alexandria Walden from Google said: “Whether or not they understand human rights, they care enough to infuse it in their company… we might not always get it right, but it is something we care about.”
Where former panels discussed controls to ensure human rights are considered in the development and implementation of AI products, this panel focused on mitigation. A spokesperson from Google pointed out that technology is inevitably going to move faster, so multiple tools are needed. Companies, OpenAI’s representative noted, still encounter issues such as discrimination and free speech. Consequently, they regard this as an additional policy which companies have a structured model to deal with, but newer companies, and newer industries, haven’t learnt it yet.
In her concluding remarks, Green called for policy makers to “make the abstract actionable” at both governmental and corporate levels. She argued that, by framing the issues posed by AI as human rights issues, we gain a “foundation” for recognising AI’s many societal impacts.
Ugandan participants in a clinical safety study received an Oxford developed Ebola vaccine this week.
Researchers vaccinated the first participants on 6th October in Masaka, Uganda. The phase follows the launch of a first-in-human Phase I trial in the UK evaluating the same vaccine candidate.
They received the vaccine as part of an evaluation of the safety and efficacy of a ChAdOx-based Bundibugyo Ebola vaccine candidate developed by the Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG) and the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford.
Development for this vaccine began in May this year in response to the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The research, led by OVG’s Professor Teresa Lambe and Professor Simon Drysdale, is funded by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). No licenced vaccine for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola virus currently exists.
In a statement to Cherwell, OVG said its involvement includes collaborating with the Ugandan research team to support “the study’s scientific design, clinical trial coordination, safety oversight, and evaluation of vaccine safety and immunogenicity”. The Phase I clinical trial addresses a rare strain of Ebola virus affecting communities in the DRC since May. The phase is a collaboration between the Medical Research Council/ Uganda Virus Research Institute and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).
Dr Nicole Lurie, CEPI’s Executive Director for Emergency Preparedness and Response, told Cherwell: “It [the Bundibugyo outbreak] remains the fastest-growing and second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded – and we currently remain without a licensed vaccine or treatment.” The Bundibugyo Ebola epidemic in the DRC has surpassed 8,600 cases, with almost half of infections proving fatal.
The outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in May.
OVG told Cherwell: “For more than a decade, the University of Oxford has performed many clinical trials of candidate viral-vectored vaccines. Some of the most promising vaccines used a modified chimpanzee adenovirus, a harmless version of a common cold virus. The Oxford-AstraZeneca (ChAdOx1) COVID-19 vaccine was approved for emergency use in the UK in December 2020 and was estimated to have saved six million lives during 2021 alone, and over 3 billion doses were used worldwide.” The adenovirus vector vaccine technology trialled in this study was successfully used worldwide as part of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
More funding is necessary to ensure the development and approval of the Ebola vaccine. Lurie told Cherwell: “Without sufficient additional funding, we are at risk of not being able to develop these promising vaccine candidates… CEPI urgently needs US$128M now to keep our Bundibugyo emergency R&D response moving. Without it, we are putting the DRC, and the world, at tremendous risk.”
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