Gender-based Discrimination in the Arts Exists, And Here’s the Research Behind It
Data behind creative and administrative roles
A journalist covering my new book recently asked me if I “still had issues as a woman in this field.” Are there still barriers holding women back, they wanted to know. My own experiences aside, the sheer volume of stories I hear from other women about unfair treatment they’ve received, microaggressions (and sometimes downright aggressions and abhorrent behavior) they’ve dealt with, roadblocks they’ve faced during hiring and recruitment processes, and bias they’ve witnessed during performance review or when presenting ideas is…heartbreaking and angering. And also a reflection of a larger systemic problem.
Inequity in the field of arts and culture is the whole reason chapters six and seven of my book exist, I said to the journalist. The book gives mounds of research-backed solutions to these issues, but what I didn’t have space to get into in the book is the data behind the problems in the first place, aka what’s going on behind these sad anecdotal stories I so often hear. So, for Women’s History Month, I’m sharing the data, numbers, and research I’ve learned about gender discrimination in the arts and across broader gender workplace trends as well.
Women’s History Month was originally made to celebrate the achievements of and contributions by women past and present, and I look forward to the industry of arts and culture being able to celebrate even more achievements when the women in this field are able to fully contribute.
I believe most people don’t want to be exclusionary. I believe most people want a stronger, more equitable future for arts and culture — and for our world as a whole. If that’s you, no matter your gender, keep reading, because I made this for all of us in the sector who want to build the best future possible, one where talented women at all levels are given opportunity to do their best work, free of roadblocks, microaggressions, and chronic bias.
This post digs into what’s happening (unpacking exactly what “gender discrimination” in arts and culture looks like), why it’s happening (this problem starts earlier than you may think and hiring more C-suite female execs is not going to solve it), and last, what’s not happening (busting some myths around this topic).
“For anyone who thinks these issues don’t exist, think again. The data bears it out in just about any artistic discipline, in just about any creative or administrative role, with just about any number of years experience.”
What’s Happening — Some #Facts
Last year, researchers out of The University of Melbourne and Deakin University published a study about lack of representation in opera. They analyzed 11 of the biggest budget opera companies in the U.S. (to be transparent, that’s Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, Seattle Opera, Dallas Opera, Houston Grand Opera, LA Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre (now Detroit Opera), Opera Philadelphia, and Santa Fe Opera), and mapped 16 seasons of production personnel to gender roles.
The authors found that “women, as a group, experienced gender-based disadvantage” in the field, and named the paper accordingly: “Unequal opera-tunities”. Usually, the headlines about women in classical music are about lack of women specifically in artistic leadership roles, such as conductor and director. This study not only found that to be statistically and categorically true — over the 16 seasons, there were 1,671 conductor roles credited, of which 95% (1,585) were men and only 5% (86) were women — but they also reported this finding extends across all key creative roles in opera production. In their data sample of data sample of 7,783 credited creative roles including director, set designer, lighting designer, costume designer and video/projection designer, an astounding 82% of those practitioners identified as men.
Their findings were so striking, even The New York Times covered it, writing, “Observers have long decried the lack of opportunities given to female conductors and composers at leading opera companies. A recent study found that women have been dramatically underrepresented in other crucial creative roles as well.”
If you want more evidence, another paper corroborates these findings. A 2021 study by the same research team analyzed the gender profile of directors and designers credited by the UK’s Royal Opera House from 2005 to 2020 before lockdown. The researchers reviewed women’s representation by production type, repertoire, and occupational category. The findings? Same song, different verse (same aria, different act??): the authors wrote they quantifiably found “evidence of systemic gender-based disadvantage for women at the company, with compounding negative impacts on their career trajectories in the sector.”
This theme and variations is not just a problem in classical music; it extends to other artistic disciplines as well. In a report on theater (2015, MacArthur), the author found women comprise just 30% of stage directors and artistic directors in Canadian theatre companies, with women seeing the highest representation at companies with the smallest budgets (put a pin in that, because women at smaller budgets is another recurring theme we’ll come back to). For now, the paper concludes, “the theatre sector shows similar evidence of both vertical and horizontal segregation for women practitioners.”
Additional reports have been published about women being underrepresented, segregated, and discriminated against in museums (more examples here, here, and here), jazz, dance (despite girls outnumbering boys 20-to-1 in ballet classes, a jaw-dropping 72% of ballet companies have a male artistic director), and Hollywood. We often think of how women didn’t have a chance in the arts back in the 18th or 19th centuries. Turns out, that trope still holds overwhelmingly true across cultural disciplines today.
All of this perpetual holding back of women stifles careers of not only artists and practitioners, but to the CEOs running our artistic institutions as well. The methodology used in the “Unequal opera-tunities” study above matched the process used to research CEO gender at orchestras in a study I published a few years ago. In both their study and mine, the data was gathered by matching the self-identified pronouns of chief leaders as male, female, or non-binary. The full methodology is here, but in short, the exercise found that the larger an orchestra’s budget, the more likely it is to be run by a man — by a lot. (I mentioned this theme of “women at smaller budgets” would come back.)
What’s extra striking is that on the whole, there are equal numbers of men and women at the helm of U.S. orchestras, it’s just that the women are relegated to opportunities at smaller organizations, and the men are ushered into roles at the bigger ones. We’ll talk about some of the reasons why this is happening in a moment, but first, know that orchestras aren’t the only ones with such an embarrassing imbalance of gender talent at the top administrative roles.
OPERA America’s own research underscores this phenomenon. The member service organization for all U.S. opera companies reports that while women hold more administrative roles than men overall, they’re not being advanced into senior leadership. Similarly at museums, the Mellon Foundation found that management positions in curatorial roles are about 15 percentage points more male than non-management roles, and that curatorial staff with no direct reports are significantly more female than any other gender identity.
Up and down the cultural spectrum, these disparities exist despite women accounting for 73% of the entire nonprofit labor force. For anyone who thinks these issues don’t exist, think again. The data bears it out in just about any artistic discipline, in just about any creative or administrative role, with just about any number of years experience.
There’s one final point on what is happening before we move to why. And that is, the data show that when women do get promoted or hired into senior roles, including and especially at the biggest budget organizations, the organization is more likely to be in financial crisis. You’ve likely heard of the glass ceiling. This promote-in-crisis phenomenon is called the glass cliff.
Why a cliff? Researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK found that promoting women during a time of extreme financial turmoil is the equivalent of standing on the edge of a cliff. If they fail, they fall off and are gone forever; their careers don’t ever really recover. In other words, when women are allowed to lead, they are more likely than men to have the financial deck stacked against them.
I know there’s probably someone reading this thinking something about how basically all arts organizations are in financial straits these days. You’re not wrong. Though I personally remember taking a chief executive role knowing there were “financial challenges” only to see upon arrival that cash flow was so bad we couldn’t make payroll in two weeks (thank goodness I was able to raise money fast…probably because it felt like my life/career depended on it, as if at the edge of a cliff). Or the time I was offered a group two orchestra CEO job and the organization was never able to even produce for me accurate financial statements because it was such a mess (I declined the offer). Even if men are getting offered similar gigs, it’s still true that the women who aren’t able to navigate through the turmoil don’t usually get a second chance. Off the cliff their careers go.
This is not new, by the way. Those researchers coined the term “glass cliff” in 2005. Nearly 20 years later as I write this, it’s still happening across all kinds of industries, including arts and culture. But even through all this talk of cliffs and ceilings, none of these facts or barriers explain exactly why all this systemic side-lining, under-estimating, and even discriminating-against women is taking place.
“We often think of how women didn’t have a chance in the arts back in the 18th or 19th centuries. Turns out, that trope still holds overwhelmingly true across cultural disciplines today.”
Why Is This Happening — It’s Not What You May Think
If it’s even possible that good news can be found in the midst of this depressing mountain of facts, maybe it’s that just as much data exists on exactly what is causing these gross, pervasive issues. And knowing the root of the problem is the first step to being able to solve it. Working backwards through some of the areas discussed above, here’s what some of the research reveals.
The Glass Cliff Offers a Human Scapegoat
Why are women promoted to top roles in times of financial crisis? One article puts it this way, “Promoting women gives companies someone to blame if she fails to pull the company out of its downward spiral. Companies look good when they promote women to leadership roles, so even if they fail, the company still earns a reputation of being progressive. If women fail, companies are free to reappoint males to their positions without reproach.”
Women are seen as a scapegoat while simultaneously checking a performative box. “Well, we tried it and it just didn’t work. Guess we can move on to the profile of someone who’s been successful before,” which is code for a White man, because that is historically who has been successful before…because only that type of person was set up to be successful before. Do White men fail too? Of course. Are they given chances to rebound and not fall off the cliff, aka multiple chances to lead again? I can think of some arts CEO appointments over the years that indicate the answer is yes. To be clear, I believe in second chances; I just want women in the field to be afforded the same opportunities for second chances as their male counterparts.
Exclusion in Artistic Leadership Roles Is A Result of Bad Hiring Practices
Caitlin Vincent and Amanda Coles, who conducted the opera company analysis above, say that lack of opportunities for women in the field “is being further perpetuated by the sector’s non-standard and overlapping employment structures, which impacts women practitioners’ professional visibility and career opportunities.” Said differently, the hiring procedure at most companies is flawed.
Now we’re finally connecting back to a lot of what I wrote in my book in a chapter called “Heidi vs Howard: Hire Fairly, Compensate Radically”. In short, the infamous “Heidi vs Howard” study out of Columbia University revealed that two people with identical qualifications and resumes — except for the name at the top — were evaluated differently, all because of the name alone. It was a landmark study on gender bias, and those biases are still preventing all kinds of great talent from historically marginalized groups (not just women) from moving through the hiring process.
Additionally, outdated gender norms in society contribute to these exclusionary practices as well.
If you think back to the glass cliff and how White men have historically been successful at the CEO job because they were historically given the opportunity to be successful at those jobs, what that has caused is essentially mental tire ruts in our brains. It’s all we’ve (mostly) seen, so it’s all we (mostly) know. Tires on the same path, over and over. As the Melbourne researchers put it, there is “strong evidence of social norms which (re)produce an occupationally gendered division of labor.”
They continue, “These norms travel horizontally across labor markets, with…women dominating administrative roles and feminized occupations such as makeup and costume designer. Women who attempt to diverge from these feminized occupational categories are framed as being less reliable, less experienced and ultimately higher risk than male workers in the same fields.” You know who else was framed differently than their male counterparts? Heidi (of Heidi and Howard). She was called “not likable,” “too assertive,” and “self-involved,” but identical-resume Howard was not.
And now, a final reason why all this gender discrimination is happening:
It’s Not the Glass Ceiling, It’s the Broken Rung
Again, what most often gets talked about is the lack of representation at the top of the org chart. But a quickly growing body research on this topic of gender discrimination reveals women are held back long before the C-Suite and big artistic roles are even on the horizon.
This is important: the biggest barrier to women’s advancement is not the “glass ceiling” as many of us have heard before. The biggest barrier to women’s advancement is what McKinsey calls the “broken rung,” the earliest promotions any worker faces in their careers. It’s not the top of the ladder, it’s the bottom. In short, McKinsey found that in a giant data set of over 900 companies across different industries totaling almost a half-million employees, the entry-level promotion is where the gender discrimination begins. For every 100 men promoted from entry-level to manager, only 87 women are promoted. For women of color, it’s even worse at only 73 being promoted for every 100 promoted men.
Because of the broken rung on the career ladder, men’s careers are advancing faster while women in their earliest years are being held back. More men rise through the ranks, and as a result, the number of women decreases at every subsequent level of leadership. They go so far as to say the ‘broken rung’ is the greatest obstacle women face on the path to senior leadership. And the data show it’s not for lack of trying.
Statistically, the same numbers of women as men are going for promotions and advancement at every step on the career ladder. Which brings us to our final stop in this fact-finding excursion.
What is NOT Happening — Myth Busting
The data and research on gender inequity inside and outside the arts gives us some final insight into what’s not happening, and that is to say that women are not becoming less ambitious.
The McKinsey study above has been conducted every year for the last eight years, which means they have longitudinal data — aka trends over time. And what they’ve found is that while there was a flood of headlines during and since the pandemic of more women quitting and leaving the workforce, those are actually anecdotes, not a broad data-backed trend.
In fact, the flexibility a lot of workers now enjoy because of the pandemic (such as remote or hybrid work, more flexible schedules, ability to do the Zoom call in the car, etc, etc), has resulted in women becoming, in fact, more ambitious than before lockdown. Overall, McKinsey found that roughly 8 in 10 women want to be promoted to the next level, compared to only 7 in 10 before coronavirus. And younger women top the charts: 9 out of 10 women ages 30 and under now want to be promoted to the next level, and 3 in 4 aspire to become senior leaders.
On stage, off stage, and in the exhibits alike, women at all stages of their careers are capable, qualified, and superbly driven to hit the gas for success at your organization.
Final Note: That One Time A Woman Led
In that first study mentioned in this article of all the major opera companies in the U.S., Washington National Opera was the only company of the the 11 companies studied whose artistic director is a woman (Francesca Zambello). It is not a coincidence they are also the only company who the researchers found “outpaced others when it came to hiring female conductors, directors and other members of its creative teams.”
This is true for all types of representation in decision-making roles: it trickles down in the best way. While this article focused specifically on women in the arts, it’s no secret that all kinds of historically marginalized groups are not just historically marginalized, but still being held back and disempowered in roles across the entire sector, as both artists and administrators.
We don’t need Women’s History Month to put an end to the persistent disparities outlined in this post, and to eradicate the biased behavior of hiring and promotion decision-makers who continue to make exclusionary choices. We can and should work for this all year round.
Most people want to be inclusive, want to celebrate good work, and want the field to realize its full potential. I hope this article of facts makes that more possible now, so we are wholly motivated to celebrate, honor, and even usher in women’s contributions to the field, not just in March, but regularly and consistently until the data show we’re truly equal.
Interested in more research and data-backed strategies to grow relevance and revenue at your arts organization? Order my book, Run It like a Business: Strategies to Increase Audiences, Remain Relevant, and Multiply Money — Without Losing the Art.
You’ll learn how to:
- Grow audiences and keep them coming back again
- Make our organizations more inclusive
- Get younger attendees in the seats and on the donor rolls
- Generate millions more dollars in revenue
- Continue to create the art we love — without the stress of figuring out how to afford it
Just because your arts organization is a non-profit, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t make money; it means the money the organization makes goes back to fund the mission — whether that’s music, visual arts, theatre, dance, or one of many other mediums that enrich our lives. www.aubreybergauer.com/book
About the Author
Hailed as “the Steve Jobs of classical music” (Observer) and “Sheryl Sandberg of the symphony” (LA Review of Books), Aubrey Bergauer is known for her results-driven, customer-centric, data-obsessed pursuit of changing the narrative for the performing arts. A “dynamic administrator” with an “unquenchable drive for canny innovation” (San Francisco Chronicle), she’s held offstage roles managing millions in revenue at major institutions including the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival, and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. As chief executive of the California Symphony, Bergauer propelled the organization to double the size of its audience and nearly quadruple the donor base.
Bergauer helps organizations and individuals transform from scarcity to opportunity, make money, and grow their base of fans and supporters. Her ability to cast and communicate vision moves large teams forward and brings stakeholders together, earning “a reputation for coming up with great ideas and then realizing them” (San Francisco Classical Voice). With a track record for strategically increasing revenue and relevance, leveraging digital content and technology, and prioritizing diversity and inclusion on stage and off, Bergauer sees a better way forward for classical music and knows how to achieve it.
Aubrey’s first book, Run It Like A Business, published in February 2024.
A graduate of Rice University, her work and leadership have been covered in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Thrive Global, and Southwest Airlines magazines, and she is a frequent speaker spanning TEDx, Adobe’s Magento, universities, and industry conferences in the U.S. and abroad.
