Women's Employment in the Arts

Overview

         Women are creating some of the most exciting and challenging art in the United States today. And yet, despite great strides in other fields and a few high-visibility success stories, women continue to face enormous employment discrimination in the arts and media.

       The Fund for Women Artists is dedicated to helping women overcome barriers directly by raising funds and providing other resources to help women do their art. At the same time, we need to educate the public about the continuing problems of gender bias and pressure institutions to change. Not only do women suffer by being shut out, but the culture as a whole is poorer when it is deprived of the vision and creativity of women artists.

         We have listed some helpful studies and links to other organizations working in these areas below.

Women's Employment in Theatre

NYSCA Study on Women in Theatre

New York State Council on the Arts Theatre Program Report on the Status of Women: A Limited Engagement?

By Susan Jonas & Suzanne Bennett 

The New York State Council on the Arts Theatre Program conducted a survey of the 2,000 plays being presented in the U.S. in 2001-2002, and found that only 17% had women writers and only 16% had women directors.  Read More>>

Guerrilla Girls on Tour

www.guerrillagirlsontour.com

The Girlcott list on the Monkey Business page lists theatres in the United States that have no plays by women in their current (2002/03 or 2003/04) seasons. The "Good News" section at the bottom of the page praises theatres that are producing work by women.

Women's Employment in Film & Television

The Celluloid Ceiling

The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind the Scenes and On-Screen Employment of Women in the Top 250 Films of 2007.

By Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D., San Diego State University

Lauzen found that since 1998, the percentage of women working as directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors on the top 250 domestic grossing films declined by 2 percentage points, to 15% in 2007.  Women accounted for only 6% of directors in 2007, slightly more than half of their percentage in 2000.  Read More>>

Boxed In

Boxed In: Women On Screen and Behind the Scenes in the 2003-2004 Prime-time Season

By Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D., San Diego State University. 

Lauzen found that women comprised 23% of all creators, executive producers, producers, directors, writers, editors, and directors of photography on prime- time TV shows in 2003-04, a percentage that has remained virtually unchanged for the last six seasons. The percentage of women writers reached a recent historical high of 31% while women editors plummeted to a recent historical low of 10%. The percentages of women creators, executive producers, producers, directors, and directors of photography remained relatively stable.

On screen, male characters outnumbered females by almost two to one (60% males, 40% females). Female characters were younger than their male counterparts, and overwhelmingly white.  For example, Asian-American women (3% of the prime-time characters) only slightly outnumbered extra-terrestrial and demon women (2% of the characters).  Read More>>

Women in UK Film Industry Earn Less

www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/usr/ukfcdownloads/246/RHUL%
20June%2027%202007%20-%20Final%20for%20Cheltenham.pdf

A new study by the UK Film Council and Skillset, a public-private film industry training group, found that while women in the film industry in the United Kingdom are more qualified than men in the industry, they earn significantly less. Women are also much less likely than men to be married or have dependent children. Click on the link above to read the report.

New York Women in Film and Television

www.nywift.org/article.aspx?id=60

The "Status of Women in the Industry" section of the site includes an excellent assortment of studies and articles.

Movies Directed by Women

www.moviesbywomen.com

Information on historical women directors, statistics on women directors, and Director interviews. You can also sign up here to be placed on the First Weekender's Group mailing list and hear about films by women that are about to open. Supporting a film on its first weekend shows that films by women can have box-office clout.

Girls, Women + Media Project

www.mediaandwomen.org

Activist site with summaries of studies of bias in news media and coverage of women's sports, as well as studies of imagery of women in film and television.

Women's Employment in Classical Music

Kristina Kohler, Women's Philharmonic Executive Director

From an interview with NYFA Current, August 7, 2003:

"The American Symphony Orchestra League 2002/03 Repertoire Report shows that fewer than 1% of works programmed in the 2002/03 season represent works by women. Of the 484 composers programmed in the 2002/03 season by 104 significant League member orchestras, only 5% were women. Of the 104 world premieres listed in the report, only 10% represent works by women composers.

Commissioning of works by women composers has begun to pick up for some composers (i.e. Jennifer Higdon, Chen Yi, Augusta Read Thomas). However, women on the whole still lag far behind: Of the 85 total organizations applying on behalf of a composer to Meet the Composer's (MTC) commissioning grants in 2002, only 19% represented a woman composer. Of the 17 awarded Meet the Composer grants, 24% (4) went to a woman composer. Of the 44 winners of the Broadcast Music, Inc. Student Composer Awards for Classical Music over the past five years (1998-2002), again, only 5% (or two) have been women.

There are no women conductors/music directors employed by the largest 25 North American symphonies (according to budget size of orchestra), and women represent only 11% of all conducting positions in the nation."

International Alliance for Women in Music

www.iawm.org

Organization that celebrates women in music, with activist campaigns to increase women's employment, mostly in classical music.

Women's Employment in Dance

Dance Theatre Workshop notes that based on Apollinaire Scherr's November 4, 2001 New York Times article "Making a Career With One Eye on a Gender Gap": In 1976 Wendy Perron and Stephanie Woodard found that while women constituted the majority of choreographers, dancers administrators, teachers and students, men received a larger proportion of prizes and opportunities and that a quarter century later, these findings are still true. In 2000, of 18 modern-dance choreographers who received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, 13 were men. The men received a total of $200,000, with a typical grant of $10,000; the women received a total of $45,000, with a typical grant of $5,000."

Women's Employment in Publishing and the News Media

The Times is not a-changin'

www.wellesley.edu/womensreview/archive/2004/11/
highlt.html#caplan

A study by Paula Caplan and Mary Ann Palko proves what we've always suspected: women's voices are woefully underrepresented in the pages of the New York Times Book Review , the most powerful publication in the world of book publishing. In 53 weeks of the NYTBR in 2002-03, out of 807 books reviewed, only 28% were authored by women. Of the 775 reviews, only 34% were by women reviewers. Read the report, including excerpts of correspondence with the Book Review editors, on the site of the Women's Review of Books.   

The Glass Ceiling in the Executive Suite: 

www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/NewsDetails.aspx?myId=33

The 3rd Annual Annenberg Public Policy Center Analysis of Women Leaders in Communication Companies shows that women still comprise just 15% of executive leaders and just 12% of board members in top communications companies - numbers virtually unchanged from the previous year.

The Talk of the Rest of the Town  By Dennis Loy Johnson

http://mobylives.com/NYer_survey.html

Johnson  details the lackluster representation of women in the pages of The New Yorker .