ImagineFX inequality?
While I’m aware male artists generally feature in greater numbers than female artists in the magazine, I don’t usually mind much. I certainly don’t normally take out my calculator to figure out that women only make up seven per cent of the featured artists. But in issue 118, I started to feel the lack of female contributors more acutely. And I started counting…
Out of all the artists featured with name and photo, only three out of 41 were female. And that, honestly, is shameful.
This prompted me to do some Googling on women artists and equality. All the search results ended up being about women portrayed in art rather than creating art.
However, I did find some general figures for modern art as a whole. Numbers are variously from the US and the UK, and might not be internationally comparable, but it seems around 60 per cent of art students are female. One number states that 51 per cent of modern artists today are female. In shows and exhibits, about 30 per cent are female. Women are represented in about 8-14 per cent of public art in London. In short, women artists aren’t receiving the attention and recognition they deserve.
There are two things I’d like to see ImagineFX do about this. One is a themed issue dedicated to women artists only. I would also like to see ImagineFX take the lead in moving towards a future where these gender issues are no longer issues. It shouldn’t be too difficult to set up a few goals about what per cent (of either gender) should always be represented. Charlotte Ahlgren, via email Claire replies Thanks for writing in and bringing this to our attention, Charlotte. I would agree that the issue in question doesn’t have a gender balance reflective of the industry. Though I would hope you’ll notice there’s a lot more female input in this month’s edition. The gender balance in issue 118 and this one, however, is entirely coincidental. We simply try to find great art – and for this reason I’m not sure a quota system is the best way forward. Perhaps men are simply better at promoting themselves online – which is where we research most of our artists. Also, art students may predominantly be female, but do they go on to work in the fields that we represent? Is there a fair representation of females in games and film art, and comics for example? What do other readers think?