Gender inequality in the workplace

Is there gender inequality in the workplace? Yes. Maybe because there are fewer opportunities for women who are busy being mothers.

I am afraid there is still gender inequality in the artworld. There aren't many women in the top gallery jobs or curatorial positions and less women are showing their artwork than men. Take a look down the list of artists exhibiting in any mixed exhibition this week. How many men and how many women are on that list? If we're lucky it's fifty fifty but most of the time it's thirty percent women to seventy percent men. Why is this? If more women than men are enrolling at art school, then shouldn't there be as many working as men professionally when they leave?

I have noticed throughout my career as a curator and painter that women help women with introductions to other galleries. In addition they help other women with advice about job opportunities, give their support and provide life coaching tips. It's true, women are supportive of each other! Women also will lend a hand if a male colleague needs help furthering his career. I think men can be quite generous about sharing opportunities with each other but I don't see men helping women to climb the ladder. In fact men will often pass work to other male peers bypassing female colleagues.

In my personal experience not even one man has ever helped me with an introduction to a gallery curator, museum director or art prize judge. So what's going on here? Is it a sort of rivalry? Do male artists feel threatened by a woman doing better than them? Why is it a problem when a woman wins the prize?

When I was at art school my male tutor once told me that when looking at a painting he could tell whether a man or a woman had painted it. I was shocked. Was he implying that all women painters chose to describe only feminine feelings or their research focused on the maternal? Whatever he meant, it sounded patronising to me. It came across as if he valued men's art over women's. Why did he even say it?

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