For this exercise, I was interested in data regarding gender and museum professions, and more specifically data that provide information on the percentage and professional distribution of women employed by art museums. I was hoping to find cross-national sources of data on the gender composition of art museum employees, but much of what I came across were academic sources in the form of articles and essays and data on gender inequality in cultural institutions considered more broadly. Though I did not come across cross-national information on women employed by art museums, I found two reports on gender in American art museums: one by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Ithaka S+R, the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), published January 28, 2019, and the other by AAMD and the National Center for Arts Research (NCAR), published in 2017. I thought it might also be useful to consider the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Women in Public Service Project and its Global Women’s Leadership Initiative Index (GWLII), and their indicators in thinking about the social, economic, and political factors that may affect the gender composition of art museum employees and the professional roles likely to be held by women in art museums.

The first report, “Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey 2018,” details the results of surveys that were sent to directors of AAMD and AAM member art museums in 2014 and 2018. The report is most concerned with what its authors refer to as “intellectual leadership positions,” which they identify with positions in museum leadership, education, curatorial, and conservation, as potential career pathways to directorship positions. (The involvement of the AAMD (Association of Art Museum Directors) in developing these surveys might be a possible reason for the report’s focus on “intellectual leadership positions,” considered to be pathways to directorships.) Women in roles or departments such as visitor services and front of house staff, membership, development, marketing, administration, registrars, and preparators were not reflected in the report in a disaggregated way, and it is not clear whether women in these positions were included in the report’s percentage of women employed by art museums. The results of the 2014 and 2018 surveys as presented in the 2019 report indicate that American art museums are and have continued to be staffed primarily by women, though men are still more likely to hold senior positions in museum leadership.

The second report, “The Ongoing Gender Gap in Art Museum Directorships,” presents various factors that affect gender representation in American art museum directorships that were identified in the results of surveys conducted in 2013 and 2016. (As noted in my introduction, the AAMD was involved in developing these surveys.) The authors of this report have identified varying relationships among the gender gap in museum directorships, salary disparities, operating budget size, and the type of art museum, providing information on the factors affecting gender disparity in art museums at the most senior position in museum leadership.

These two reports are specific to gender representation in American art museums, but the limited scope of each report does not provide a comprehensive understanding of the gender composition of art museum employees beyond those in “intellectual leadership positions,” including directorships. For gathering data relating to art museums in America and in other nations, I thought it might be useful to consider the SDGs, the GWLII, and their indicators in thinking about what structural factors and socioeconomic situations may contribute to gender representation in art museums.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5 is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. An indicator related to the social norms and attitudes that may prevent women and girls from seeking paid work and education is the proportion of their time spent on unpaid care and domestic work (SDG indicator 5.4.1). Related SDGs here include SDG 8, which focuses on decent work and economic growth, and SDG 4, meant to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education. SDG 8 indicators that seek in part to measure the average hourly earnings of employed women and men (8.5.1) as well as their respective unemployment rates (8.5.2) may provide socioeconomic context for the number of women employed by art museums and for salary disparities among men and women in comparable professional positions. SDG 4 indicators meant to reflect gender disparities in education and access to education, such as 4.5.1, may be considered similarly.

The Global Women’s Leadership Initiative Index of the Women in Public Service Project is concerned with women’s leadership in public service and has identified three “pillars” of parity: pathways, positions, and power. Though the various professional positions that may be held by women in art museums may not necessarily include a formal leadership component, one could draw from the GWLII, along with the SDG indicators mentioned previously, in considering the availability of access women have to education and museum professions and the representation of women employed by art museums.

Sources:

“Global Women’s Leadership Initiative Index Methodology.” The Women in Public Service Project. 2018. http://data.50x50movement.org/index/methodology.

“Roadmap to 50×50: Power and Parity in Women’s Leadership.” Wilson Center. May 2018. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/roadmap_to_50x50-_power_and_parity_in_womens_leadership.pdf.

“Sustainable Development Goal 4: Ensure Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education and Promote Lifelong Learning.” United Nations. Accessed February 1, 2020. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg4.

“Sustainable Development Goal 5: Achieve Gender Equality and Empower All Women and Girls.” United Nations. Accessed February 1, 2020. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg5.

“Sustainable Development Goal 8: Promote Sustained, Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Growth, Full and Productive Employment and Decent Work for All.” United Nations. Accessed February 1, 2020. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg8.

Treviño, Veronica, Zannie Giraud Voss, Christine Anagnos, and Alison D. Wade. “The Ongoing Gender Gap in Art Museum Directorships.” Association of Art Museum Directors. 2017. https://aamd.org/sites/default/files/document/AAMD%20NCAR%20Gender%20Gap%202017.pdf.

Westermann, Mariët, Roger Schonfeld, and Liam Sweeney. “Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey 2018.” The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. January 28, 2019. https://mellon.org/media/filer_public/e5/a3/e5a373f3-697e-41e3-8f17-051587468755/sr-mellon-report-art-museum-staff-demographic-survey-01282019.pdf.