This is a round-up of and commentary on surveys about women artists and gender imbalance in art around the world.
Regular readers will know that I've regularly commented on this blog about the representation of women in artists selected for art competitions, exhibitions in galleries and on the committees running art societies and museums etc. Indeed I have been known to comment also on the "
get on and do" approach of a number of societies run by women!
 |
Part of a very effective graphic for the admirable "Countess Report "
- published on a regular basis in Australia. The latest (2016) report draws on 2014 data. |
This post started from one recently published survey report in the UK - and then grew and became international!
Representation of Women Artists in the UK
Earlier this year a research report on the
Representation of Women Artists in the UK was published. I've
summarised its conclusions below.
- The report was commissioned by the Freelands Foundation and the author of the report was Charlotte Bonham-Carter.
- The report addresses the question "Are female artists under-represented in Britain?" and seems to have started from the presumption that they are not.
often people think that equality has already been achieved in the arts due to the fact that things have indeed improved. Inspirational figures such as Tracey Emin, who have defied the statistics, exist in the public arena – but the truth is that women are still severely under-represented in the art world.
I don't know if the link to the report I've highlighted above is the complete report or a related presentation. (
Does anybody know?)
Context - previous reports
I'm providing the hyperlinks to the resources it built on as these are either missing in the document itself or the links don't work in the online version.
 |
| if only we could! |
It built on
The Great East London Art Audit - conducted by the East London branch of the Fawcett Society in 2013.
This report
Cultural Value and Inequality: A Critical Literature Review written by Dr. Dave O’Brien & Prof. Kate Oakley is also cited as an influence. It was commissioned by the
Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Cultural Value Project
Inequality has become essential to understanding contemporary British society and is at the forefront of media, political and practice discussions of the future of the arts in the UK
Representation of Women Artists in the UK Conclusions
In summary, the conclusions of the the
Representation of Women Artists in the UK report (
in the document I've read) are that:
- female art and design graduates outnumber men
- men outnumber women in activities relating to a relevant career for an art graduate eg solo exhibition at a large gallery
- representation of female artists has increased over the years. An audit of female representation at non-commercial artists showed that 42% of shows were by female artists in 2014/15 compared to 31% in 2012/13
- representation of female artists drops outside London (down to 33%)
- gender imbalances persist at and beyond the mid-career stage
So - bottom line. It's very clear that there's a gender gap - but we already knew that didn't we?
My concerns are that the report essentially
- Fails to rather than formulate and test a hypothesis in statistically robust manner. Consequently it does not demonstrate that its conclusions are statistically valid (speaking as one who crunched data for a good part of her career! See NOTE at the end of this post re. some of my statistical concerns)
- Fails to test other dimensions which ALSO contribute to levels of progression and
- Describes rather than analyses statistics collected - e.g it does not look for any patterns of correlation with any other relevant factors
For example, many women who choose to combine having a career with motherhood often pursue very different career patterns over the life of their career due to a desire to provide stability for children when they are young. It's a matter of choice for some - not the dominance of a male sub-culture in the "Art". Not everybody wants to hand over their children to childminders - some are happier to allow a career to take more of a backseat role for a period of time - with a view to pursuing career development and achieving career 'markers' (
e.g. get selected for the Venice Biennale; get short-listed for and/or win the Turner Prize) at a later date.
At the same time very few artists (of any gender) are ever going to achieve the 'top level' achievements. The top artists come out of a big pool of those who don't quite make it to the top.
The bigger that pool is, the more women artists will eventually make it to the top - so long as there is fair-dealing and appropriate processes to support career development.
Of much more concern - and I would argue of much more relevance to the expenditure of research funds - is the ability to
- identify those factors that make the biggest difference to how most artists progress their careers - and become part of "the pool" and then climb out of it.
- ensure that the data framework and sampling frame and methodology are statistically valid i.e. if you're going to count do it in the right way.
- identify and track relevant data on a regular and consistent basis - e.g. by ONE project. (See The Countess Report below for a more methodologically sound basis for collecting and analysing relevant data)
The scope and breadth of relevant context
I'd have thought
a more thorough-going review would have looked at a wider context e.g.
- the extent to which ALL art graduates (i.e. analysed by gender) remained in full time art-related activity - thus creating a gender-related baseline for measuring engagement and progression
- whether studies of gender imbalance in relation to other vocational degrees (eg medicine and the law) and/or other areas of creative professional activity (drama/music etc) also contribute to understanding better how 'being a woman' impacts on career progression.
I suspect there are a fair few longitudinal studies out there for other areas where the progress of women in career fields continues to be an area of concern.
See for example the following articles highlighting
the even worse gender imbalance at music festivals.
Half of music festival attendees are women. But on stage, the numbers tell a different story.
 |
| from : Where are all the women headlining music festivals? | The Telegraph 08.08.14 |
Plus here's an interesting observation from one female musician commenting to The Telegraph - suggesting that it's not unusual for those sitting within one area of the arts to not look to closely at what's going on in another area!
"When it comes to mindfully representing women with the right message, music is out of date in comparison to art and literature.
How do gender differences in art vary around the world?
Another consideration is whether the progression of female artists is the same around the world - or whether it varies from place to place. Study of such factors says a lot more about the influence of general culture and attitudes to and support for the progression of women.
For example if we look to the southern hemisphere....
