Are women less creative than men?
One day at the office of a creative agency, I was talking with my colleague, a very talented young graphic designer and illustrator. “I’ve often wondered why it is that in the design school we barely had any guys in our class, but in working life, nearly all the managerial positions in design are held by men”, she told me.
At the time, I was still a rookie in the ad industry, but even I had already come to notice that the managerial positions in creative agencies were indeed systematically held by men. She continued: “I mean, there are so many fewer guys entering the industry, yet they end up filling all the top positions. What happens to the girls?”
I couldn’t come up with an explanation for this glaring paradox then, but I never forgot that remark.
This year, the International Women’s Day brought up the topic in my mind again. I still work in advertising, an industry where the success of companies and employees alike is nearly always attributed to superior performance in creativity. An industry where a whopping 89% of executives are indeed male, while women make up 46% of the industry’s total workforce.
“Could a lack of creativity in women attribute to their scarce number as executives in any industry?”
Could the disproportion of men and women in creative exec positions be explained by the same reasons often provided to explain the overrepresentation of men in virtually all managerial positions, irrespective of the industry? You know — guys work longer hours, have more ambition and all that stuff. Or could it even be the other way around — could a lack of creativity in women attribute to their scarce number as executives in any industry?
Gender and creativity
After some digging around the topic, I discovered that several academic studies have indeed investigated the relationship between gender and creative abilities in an attempt to establish a correlation between the two. Till this day, however, the scientific community has not been able to reach a clear consensus on the results.
Some studies say men are slightly more creative than women, others claim the exact opposite and several more report that both genders perform equally in terms of creativity. The complexity of the very concept of gender is of course making the question even more difficult to answer because identification with masculine or feminine traits does not always go hand in hand with gender as a biological concept.
“When men are judged as more creative than women, other forces than scientific facts are at play.”
Pretty much the only thing where most research on creativity and gender seems to converge is that the extent to which men benefit professionally from their perceived superiority in creative abilities is in no way proportionate to an existing, scientifically proven correlation between gender and creativity. More often than not, when men are judged as more creative than women, other forces than scientific facts are at play.
The bias
If women are not less creative than men, why are they not equally represented in creative industries and various executive positions where innovativeness is considered a desirable trait? A Duke University study from 2015 may well have found the explanation.
A study by Prof. Proudfoot and her team discovered that women are generally considered as less creative than men — even by other women. Both men and women associate creativity with stereotypically “masculine” traits — independence, daring — more than with “feminine” traits, such as cooperativeness and sensitivity. In other words, we are biased to think that men are by default more creative than women.
“We are biased to think that men are by default more creative than women.”
This finding is daunting for women in all industries, including traditionally less creativity-driven fields such as technology and business. Surveys of top business executives have identified creative thinking as the most important professional skill for the future of work. It is one of the few human skills AI and robots cannot replicate — and that is still vital for solving the constantly more complex problems in our society.
Consequently, perceptions about creative capability have a strong impact on who advances and who doesn’t in their career. The bias clearly implies that women are more likely to experience barriers to climb up the corporate ladder than their male colleagues. This, of course, on top of the barriers highlighted by previous research: women are generally also considered as less intelligent and competent than men.
Want change? Start with yourself.
To conclude, the problem is not that women would in fact be incapable of being equally creative as men. And it’s not that people are intentionally discriminatory — we just have a strong tendency to avoid mental taxation and following a subconscious bias is so much easier. Instead, the biased perception on gender and creativity is largely based on prevailing stereotypes that have their roots deep in our culture, attitudes and norms about gender roles.
“Just being aware is one small step in the right direction.”
The study by Prof. Proudfoot and her team was first in its kind and more data is still needed to understand the phenomenon better. However, these findings should already be enough to get us all to stop and think again about the biases we might rely on when evaluating someone’s creative output. Just being aware is one small step in the right direction, as Prof. Proudfoot points out.
“We are beyond proud to have so many wonderful and creative women as our founders and members crushing stereotypes and fighting unfounded prejudices.”
We at Luova Aalto believe that all humans are born creative. Developing your creative abilities has nothing to do with gender. As we are on a mission to spread the gospel of creativity among students of all disciplines, we find it particularly important to advance equality in this issue as well. We are beyond proud to have so many wonderful and creative women as our founders and members crushing stereotypes and fighting unfounded prejudices.
To celebrate International Women’s Day we encourage everyone to start paying attention to this bias — and throw it out in the trash. We are all creative souls, men and women alike ❤
By Minttu Aarniovuori
Communications at Luova Aalto
MSc student at Aalto BIZ & Creative at NORD DDB
Twitter: @minttuaa
“What’s your favourite idea? Mine is being creative.”
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