Gender bias

Female visual artists earned about 20 percent less than their male counterparts between 2017 and 2021. Incidentally, the incomes of both male and female visual artists as a whole are quite a bit lower than that of other creative professions, but even there women earn less. Women also receive fewer awards, although that distribution shows a different picture in the visual arts (there, 54 percent of awards go to women). In literature, the percentage of male laureates comes out to about 90 percent. Figures on non-binary artists have been made very little explicit.

Back to the visual arts. That's where women often draw the short straw. The headline Wed as recently as August 17, 2022, that art made by women fetches half as much, and about a year and a half before that we learned that only 13 percent of the collection pieces in museum galleries are made by women, that only 2 percent of the art market's sales are devoted to works of art made by women, and that 10 percent of international galleries represent no women at all (The People's Newspaper, March 4, 2021).*

The literature puts the percentage of male laureates at about 90 percent

Some of this no doubt has to do with the still dominant masculine view of what is beautiful, good and worthwhile. Gender bias is called. In 2017, the platform WomanInc wrote about it, "Gender bias boils down to the fact that we automatically rate men's competencies higher than women's. This has far-reaching consequences. For example, [...] female entrepreneurs appear to receive structurally less funding from venture capital firms than male entrepreneurs. [...] women receive vaguer feedback than men and are challenged over 2 times more often than men for their "aggressive" way of communicating. While completely 'de-biasing' people is not entirely possible, we can take measures against this."

Gender bias boils down to the fact that we automatically rate men's competencies higher that those of women's

What we can do, it seems to sound like, is at least work on awareness. Awareness that leads to equal appreciation on all fronts, more appreciation also for the other, not only in words but also in deeds. Also to prevent the roles from being completely reversed and men ending up as a backlash in a place where they can do very little good because everything that is he does or says is perceived as defensive and stems from the privileges he has as a man.

Let us look and listen even more closely to the individual stories wherever they are told or shown

Let us be aware on all fronts that we have biases and look at those biases and recognize that they are irrational and not guiding. When you see it, you can do something about it. Even more than we already do, let's try to act and be non-judgmental where gender, background, ancestry, and whatever it is that distinguishes one from another is concerned.

And so let us look and listen even more closely to the individual stories of individuals we encounter and have in our lives. Whether those stories are told at the kitchen table, at the coffee machine, on the train, in literature, film, drama or in the visual arts.

* Up-to-date figures on the position of women in the visual arts were recently published by the Boekman Foundation.