The Federal Ministry for Art, Culture, Public Service and Sport (BMKÖS) today published the first nationwide gender report for the area of art and culture. The report, the study period of which extends from 2017 to 2021, provides an overview of the issue of gender equality in all areas of art and culture and is based on a unanimously approved motion for a resolution by the National Council in December 2020.
The study was developed by the OGM Institute in collaboration with gender expert Petra Unger. A representative survey of more than 900 institutions with information on approximately 17,000 employees, 2,800 managers and 2,300 supervisory bodies, the federal and state art and culture reports and anonymized secondary data (e.g. tax data, labor market database) served as the database.
“During this government period, we have already taken a number of measures for greater gender equality in art and culture, but this area is not an island of the blessed either – the report for the years 2017 to 2021 shows this very clearly.”said Art and Culture Minister Werner Kogler. “We must take these results and the recommendations of the experts very seriously and continue to work consistently on improvements – for example as part of the Fair Pay Initiative, which my department is pushing forward. What I see as positive is that a positive trend can already be seen in many areas during the period under review. I am therefore confident that this will increase significantly in the next gender report due to the measures we have taken since then.”
The authors of the study fundamentally state that the distribution of gender in professional and funded art and cultural institutions 2017-2021 is not egalitarian, both at the different structural levels and in the different art sectors. Although women are in the majority of paid employees and audiences, men are overrepresented in management (particularly in the highest paid positions), in supervisory bodies and in the area of visibility of works.
In principle, the study authors note similar structural disadvantages for women as in other areas of society, both in terms of the appointment of managers and supervisory boards, as well as in terms of the visibility of works and the gender pay gap, although this narrowed slightly during the study period but is still higher than the average for all sectors.
The study shows an extremely high degree of heterogeneity between the individual art and cultural institutions and sectors, with the music sector, among others, proving to be particularly male-dominated. In addition, the higher the budget of an institution, the greater the proportion of men.
The central recommendations of the report are the resumption and development of concrete women’s advancement plans as well as the implementation of gender mainstreaming and general measures against precarious working relationships. Furthermore, a timely continuation of data collection (further studies and gender reports) for individual sectors and according to the size of the institution is recommended. In view of the very different reporting in the federal states on the awarding of funding for art and culture, the standardization of the states’ art and culture reports is encouraged.
The test results in detail:
According to the report, around 42 percent of paid employees in arts and culture were men and 55 percent were women during the study period. The remaining 3 percent defined themselves as non-binary or their gender was unknown. Among those employed full-time, 52 percent were men and 48 percent were women.
There were large gender differences in pay. Among those working full-time all year round, women had an income disadvantage of 18.7 percent (average for all sectors: 14.1 percent). Regardless of working hours, there was an average income difference of 37 percent. However, improvements were noted in both categories over the course of the study period: among those employed full-time all year round, the gender pay gap decreased from 19.6 to 17 percent from 2017 to 2021, and on average for all employees from 40.2 percent to 33.7 percent. The average income of self-employed women in the arts and culture sector was also more than a third (36.5 percent) lower than that of men during the study period.
As far as managers are concerned, there was generally a balanced ratio of 49 percent men and women in the study period (2 percent “other gender” or “gender unknown”). However, the ratio tilts significantly in the highest income class of managers (from 100,000 euros in annual gross income): Here, 64 percent were men and 36 percent were women. There was also a slight preponderance of men (54 percent) over women (46 percent) on the supervisory bodies of art and cultural institutions.
In the advisory boards and juries that the federal and state governments set up to award funding or award prizes, there was a largely egalitarian distribution of gender, although a gap between the regional authorities was noticeable: at the federal level, 56 percent of the jury and advisory board members were women, at the state level, 54 percent are men.
The gender ratio was also relatively balanced when it came to directly personal funding: on average, 51.6 percent of funding commitments from the federal and state governments went to men and 48.4 percent to women. In this area too, a shift in favor of female applicants was noted over the course of the study period.
During the course of the study, the gender-specific visibility and visibility of artists’ works was also examined. According to the study authors, when averaged across all categories, 55 percent of works by men and 42 percent of works by women were visible, although there were large differences between the categories.
The first nationwide gender report for art and culture is on the BMKÖS website available.