Labor inequities may be invisible to the museum or gallery visitor while being normalized to its workers, but current economic assessments reveal startling shortcomings for women in the arts.
The dropping birthrate in the United States — accelerated by the 2020 pandemic — has produced media coverage exploring the “selfishness” of mothers that delay motherhood or “mothers’ guilt” for opting out of work. Neither alleged issue is supported by the abundant economic and sociological research on women’s decision making. According to economist Elizabeth Caucutt’s study “Why Do Women Wait?” workers that postpone motherhood experience increased earnings, but upon the event of motherhood, endure sustained wage flattening. This wage penalty is amplified among women of higher education levels, resulting in fewer labor interruptions (children) due to the cost of maternity leave on future earnings and the absence of paid parental leave policies in the United States. Economist Heather Antecol argues in “The Opt-Out Revolution,” that women don’t drop from the workforce in a typical year due to motherhood unless employed in male-dominated occupations which lack family friendly policies, such as paid parental leave, child benefits, and adequate wages. Since only 8% of the 3,050 galleries listed on Artsy’s database represent more than one woman artist and the three most visited museums in the world — the British Museum, Louvre, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art — have never been led by female directors, it is clear that “visual artist” is one of these male-dominated occupations. It also comes as no surprise that cultural institutions are constantly draining their talent and dismissing this retention problem as a woman’s issue, when we should look at this as a structural failure.
Examples of women in the visual arts whose experience seems to debunk the existence of what is a very real motherhood penalty are regularly discussed. Tara Donovan had her twins a decade after showing at the 2000 Whitney Biennial. Kara Walker and Julie Mehretu had their respective first child the same year each earned the MacArthur “genius grant.” Postponing motherhood optimized their career outcomes. Why should I care whether an artist made motherhood the subject of her recent photographic series or that Kara Walker is a mother? Superstars and symbols “by themselves won’t affect structural change” writer Seph Rodney recently argued. “Representation alone will not save us.” So how will we save ourselves in a system that assumes women are a substitutable good, but our films, art, and poetry are not?
Diana Al-Hadid told Artsy that she rejected the idea that motherhood changed her work: “You wouldn’t ask a man that question.” True, but it is regularly observed in economic research that married men witness a 10%-20% increase in pay over non-married males. This “marriage premium” is due to the perceived and realized increased productivity and schedule flexibility which the man enjoys thanks to a spouse who manages distracting tasks like providing meals, maintaining the home and managing family schedules. Patricia Still, for example, produced valuable time for her husband Clyfford by managing his correspondences and building an archival system that lives today at the museum bearing his name.
Several reports from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which has 37 member countries, prove hiring and wage policies by private firms do not effectively address labor inequities. US museums increasingly occupy a plural system that accepts gifts and grants while supporting policies that are anti-organized labor, which is made evident with practices of subcontracting work and union busting. When cultural institutions behave like corporations by undermining economic democracy, their ability to access public subsidies and grants must diminish.
The OECD reports also prove that public policy is a major lever for reconciling work disparities, which is why there needs to be a national childcare system, like those that already exist in Norway, Denmark and Germany. If we consider the museum professions with a higher percentage of women, such as conservation and education, the greatest concentration of these jobs are in the country’s most expensive childcare marketplaces (New York, Massachusetts, Washington DC) typically costing $20,000 annually. Children are a public good, not just a private obligation, therefore no family should have to contribute more than seven percent of its household income to childcare. Furthermore, paid sick and family leave, expanded reproductive healthcare, and a federal minimum wage of $15 must be adopted to recover and grow from our recent historic employment losses.
For members of the American creative class, sharing our stories is not enough anymore. Institutions that recently enacted new inclusion policies and diversity hiring objectives must grapple with their compensation gaps. Class and race are bound up in these issues, thus addressing one without tackling the others encourages all equity initiatives to fail. Unionization efforts must continue and organize across industry lines to pressure enactment of the public policies that our workforce needs.
The cultural industry contributes a greater share to the United States gross domestic product than agriculture, transportation, or construction, proving that creative work is work. So when representation in the labor force reached a 33-year low for women after filing 86% of December’s jobless claims, any exhibition or article debating the power or stigma of motherhood signals a colossal failure to confront the quantifiable impact of that role on employment.
Research shows that women in the labor market are essential to economic growth, fighting poverty and maintaining those fertility rates that the New York Times is so worried about. It will take a lot more than grants, residencies or pointing to the same five female artists who “made it” after motherhood to reverse what has been lost.
Excellent article.
Kealey, thank you for writing about these issues. While living in Manhattan in the 80s, I had two kids. I felt marginalized as a female artist before the birth of my children, however after they arrived, it became painfully clear New York was not at all interested in an artist/mother — glad to see the recent artist/mother movement! I remember talking to a curator at a renowned not-for-profit about my proposal for a large-scale installation. The curator became visibly uncomfortable by the fact I had my baby with me. Then, as babies do, he wanted to breastfeed! Forget that and forget the installation! We soon left New York — we simply could not afford to stay. After we left, I created The Birth of Housework, a series of paintings about childbirth and child-rearing, which got some traction. Another curator at another not-for-profit in New York loved the work — “This work is the next phase of feminist art.” But, evidently the director did not agree.
And your point about the compensation gap is fundamental. While museums are touting a new interest in diversity, what institutions are tackling the pay gap? What good is having a diverse administration when the lowest paid (already diverse) staff members are not making proportional wages?
THANK YOU
Today is the 33rd birthday of my oldest child, and we’re still having this conversation? *sigh* Raising two children while maintaining an art practice and a half-time job as an arts administrator for the first 10 years of their lives never stopped me from developing as an artist and exhibiting, but it most definitely slowed me down quite a bit during that period. Look, I’m not complaining about the choices I made. I can’t imagine my life without those two young men in it. I have a meaningful life as an artist, and I get my work out there, even if I’m not a “superstar.” But the article doesn’t mention that once your kids are launched and independent and you can focus your full attention on the art career, you are now 20 years older and dealing with an art world (esp. the commercial galleries and art press) that valorizes youth, despite the occasional heartwarming article about some 80-year-old artist who’s been toiling away for decades who is finally getting “discovered.” There’s an unspoken assumption that equates a woman with children with lack of artistic or career ambition, but I also know many men who take fatherhood seriously and want to be present for their children in ways their own fathers were not or could not be, who chafe at the assumption that you sacrifice that kind of involvement in your children’s lives if you’re ambitious. Moreover they find unacceptable the idea that their daughters should have fewer opportunities than their sons. Ultimately, I think those men can be allies in challenging the status quo described in this article. Really the issues raised here are part of a larger question about whether Americans really do value women, parenting, and family life, or whether they are viewed as a pesky inconvenience to the smooth operation of a capitalist economy.
Good point, Helen. The age thing and the Grandma Moses syndrome. You have to half-dead before anyone pays attention.