How the gender income gap in the art industry effects me, a 21 year old female design student

Equality for women is progress for all – Ban Ki Moon 

After doing some research on gender inequality within the art world, I came across something rather disturbing that truly made my blood boil. 

Statistics show that women in the art industry are more likely to have a lower annual income compared to a male working in the industry. According to the article The status of women in the Canadian arts and cultural industries published in August 2018, on average in 2014, female visual artists earned 65% of what male visual artists earned. Salaries vary depending on what field you are working in, but for the majority, women tend to be paid thousands of dollars less per year in art fields than men, even if their job description is the same. 

May I express how F****D up this is? 

I feel like now more than ever our society has been advocating gender equality and women rights and pushing the boundaries of what used to be acceptable. This has given women the platform to be involved in various art fields and to have opportunities to succeed just as a man would. This is great because for centuries males have dominated the art industry and now the tables are turning, but the fact female artists do not get paid equally to male artists in 2019 is astonishing. It makes me feel that our society takes one step forward but then takes ten steps back. 

I wonder who makes the rules and decides women do not deserve the same wage or salary as a men do? If a female has a strong academic and creative background that has given her expertise and knowledge that makes her qualified for a position and a male meets the same standards, why is it that he gets favoured and paid more for the same quality of work? 

In all honesty, this form of discrimination makes me worried. I am a twenty one year old female who just applied to University to obtain a bachelors degree of fine arts with a major in design and I have a long journey ahead of me. The reason I chose this career path is because I have a creative mind that thinks outside of the box and I have proved to myself that I have the capabilities and the expertise to flourish in this field. After conducting my research and reading multiple articles and scholarly papers, I decided that this blog post should bring further awareness to gender income gaps in the art industry and to inform young adults who are in similar shoes as myself. Many people have written about this issue but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it from the perspective of a female art student. Is all the money, time and effort I am putting into my education worth it? Or am I setting myself up for struggle and failure? Looking at statistics from 2010 until present, I haven’t seen much of an improvement in gender income gaps. My question for my audience is how do you think we can fix a problem such as this and do you see it being fixed in the near future or do we have many obstacles before it is truly solved? 

Until next time…

Caitlin W.