The debate over how and why men and women are different and what that means for their roles in society is far from settled.
According to a Survey by the Pew Research Center. a majority of Americans believe there are definite differences between men and women in terms of how they express their feelings, their physical abilities, their hobbies and interests, and how they parent…
The survey also mentions that on every point but physical abilities, men and women disagree: Men believe that gender differences are based on biology, and women say they are rooted in societal expectations.
The past couple of years or so have no doubt been a turning point when it comes to sexual harassment allegations in the workplace. Women, who are often the victims, feel more empowered knowing that if they come forward today, they are more likely to be believed, and their perpetrator is more likely to be held accountable.
We may have come a long way on attitudes about gender, but when you ask “What’s the cause of those differences?” that’s when a true gender gap becomes evident.
In the street art world there is definitely an apparent disparity between men and women where, not only, a big number of murals gets painted by men, but also men get a better compensation and treatment. Some say what causes this disparity is because men outnumber women.
To get to the bottom of this issue, I have asked a few female artists and curators that are active in the street art scene what their opinion on the matter is or if they think such disparity exist.
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Kilia Llano – Artist:
The scenario here is more about men painting most of the walls than equality of compensation, although there are only a few women doing murals in the Dominican Republic. The situation is very surrealistic, on one hand the few women doing murals are getting paid same as men but on the other hand women artists are not painting in the streets, either because is a men’s territory or because they are not interested in working that hard in the streets with the surrounding we get here. For example, right now I’m the only woman really active in the streets inside DR and outside. I know about 5 female artists that are really really good but don’t want to take over the streets and about 10 more that need to work their skills much more in order to really compete with the male street artist.
This is not an easy profession, I’ve been working very hard to be where I am now and still have a lot to do and learn, but maybe not having a lot of women painting in the streets doing quality work has different reasons. It is hard to get art education in DR, the only place is Altos de Chavon school of design, which is a private school and expensive. The rest of schools are insufficient and in my opinion not good enough. On top of that, this is a country with a lot of machismo, women are raised to be more at home, take care of the kids, and of course the harassment in the streets here also doesn’t help.
But as I said before, the situation here is very unique.
Anonymous Artist:
It doesn’t surprise anybody to know that in general in the art scene and particularly in the street art scene, women are not equal to men.
Some shocking and real examples:
– I asked an international urban art festival organizer why in his line-up there were so few women, he replied: “they do not have enough physical strength to carry pots of paints and may complain of fatigue or seek help.”
– Another organizer told me that he wanted to invite more women to his festival but found none with a sufficiently good level and international recognition to attract the attention of his line-up. So it was too difficult for him to set up a festival with a gender parity.
– An international female urban artist told me an interesting anecdote. This past summer she painted on the street and her boyfriend accompanied her to keep her company. What happened was that people who stopped and were interested in her work always asked her if her boyfriend was the painter, despite the fact that she was covered in paint with brushes in her hands while her boyfriend was not covered in paint or using paintbrushes.
The comments above and others are common. I believe it’s because all over the world, from developing countries to the richest ones, these attitudes towards female capacity, creativity, physical strength, and intellectual force are normalized.
Our society is controlled by men with a macho mentality and street art should be a tool to help to open minds all over the world.
Anonymous Artist:
About the subject of street art having a disparity between men and women, I wholeheartedly agree. I also think there has been a disparity between men and women not only in the art field but in many other fields. In both art and these other fields, it was considered “weird” to see women working and standing outside. This is not something we should see in the 21st century.
In my particular opinion, and through my experience I have seen this disparity, now that I’ve been doing this for years. It’s very strange to know that some people, not all of course, underestimate someone just for being a woman. Thus, they expect less to begin with, and as a woman you have to go out of your way to prove yourself. I take this as a challenge but I still feel it shouldn’t be this way.
Although I try not to focus on gender disparity, it does frustrate me that it still exists in the realm of the illogical and the unfair. Artists both female and male need to support each other in an effort to change the ill treatment of female artists and other artists that are being underestimated.
Maya Hayuk – Artist:
I really don’t spend much time thinking about this. When I started painting outdoors in SF, nobody knew the artist/tagger’s name, gender, race, immigration status, sexual identity, age, class, hair color, etc. It was simply poetry on the street to me. Ironically, it turns out that most of those artists were/are women/ queer, who could give a fuck about fame or getting a deal with Nike. If I wasted my time wondering if I’m an equal to my fellow humans, I’d lose touch with why I make art….because it has nothing to do with my vagina. To classify straight, white males as “normal” and everyone else as an “other” only reinforces stereotypes and moves us all backwards.
Anonymous Artist:
I want to say that there are some stereotypes that are still socially accepted.
At the last festival European men were paid more than me, and I was also the only woman participating.
When I was painting with a male assistant all the people seem to think that he’s the artist! Thus, they also seem to think that all the technical aspects are to be carried out by my male assistant. People have actually asked me if I require a man to move the lift. Not to mention the more interviews and video footage male artists got.
I also find some artists to be quite sexist in their crude treatment of women. I have in mind an artist that was at the festival who took women back to the flat we both shared for sex, and would then show me pictures of his newly born daughter. And one morning he stood close to me without his shirt on as if to show me how irresistible he was.
Faith XLVII – Artist:
This inequality that exists in street art is echoing a wider problem within the gallery structure and within contemporary art context. This is also pervasive in most other fields of work. It’s not only a gender issue but also an issue of color, where the majority of the top artists being promoted and celebrated are white men. This is an issue that needs to be addressed on a wider scale.
There are important alternative perspectives, narratives and stories that need to be told and heard. The cause of this has its roots in several places, entrenched societal sexism power structures and gender roles taught from a young age.
It’s definitely a good time for the feminine, indigenous, LGBTQ, non first-world, perspectives to come to the forefront, as we are clearly in a time of imbalance and we need to find new ways of living and analyzing our relationship with the planet and each other.
I do believe if we support and encourage a more diverse range of artists, this can help with the conversation.
Carrie Reichardt – Artist:
I can’t really say that much about the disparity in the street art scene between men and woman as I am not really that much a part of that whole scene.
I can say that I first made a stencil to go on the streets in about 1989 – ‘No means No’ and ‘Less protected Most Vulnerable’ to place around Leeds Poly (where I was enrolled on a Fine Art course) to mark on the floor areas where young woman had been sexually assaulted. Unfortunately, having been assaulted myself the previous year I was actually too scared and traumatised to go out at night to do the actual graffiti.
It wasn’t until a decade later that I started to go out and start sticking work up on the streets – often with mates and often during the day. It is very quick to just stick up a tile.
My first venture into the whole street art world is through Nuart. Since 2017 they have invited me to attend street art festivals in Norway, Oslo and Scotland.
My experience with Nuart has always been great – and I am very grateful to Martyn Reed for reaching out to me and giving me this opportunity to have my work seen internationally. My experience is that Nuart treats all its artists fairly so I can’t really comment on the disparity as I do not have any experience of it. But maybe that says something in itself. ? It would be pretty hard for me to attend many street art festivals anyway, as I am a single mother and like most women the responsibility to care for the children has fallen with me.
I’m really sorry I can’t say more – but I don’t really operate in the street art scene, that is what is great about Martyn, he gets artists that are not known in that world and gives them a chance.
Julieta XLF – Artist:
I think that in order to have conversations about gender disparity as it exists today, we need to look to how there is a history of treating women as lesser beings. How women are treated today comes from a long tradition that stretches far back into the past. Of course there is a greater number of men in the street art world and in so many other areas, but we have to ask ourselves “WHY?” The fact gender disparity still exists does not mean that women enjoy street art less than their male counterparts. This also doesn’t mean that women are unable to create street art.
Nowadays it seems that women have the same chances and opportunities as men but that’s not really true. There are limitations in our culture, in education, and in the collective consciousness. There is a lot of work to do to break those learned patterns that limit us. It is a job that both men and women have to do. There are many female street artists who are very good at what they do and they work extremely hard at creating wonderful street art. In order for this female street art to continue to expand we need to make an effort to research what helps female street artists within the street art scene.
Anonymous Artist:
Not all, but a large percentage of the ‘street art’ scene has developed over from graffiti. This is a more male dominated scene for multiple reasons – one being the basic idea that the streets at night are notoriously unsafer for women. Not that it’s a generally safe arena, but if you’re at risk of rape, harassment and abuse on top of a fine or a night in a cell, there’s a lot more to lose.
So although I don’t know the figures and I think it would be very difficult to gather them, I’d guess that there are a larger number of longer standing and established male artists from the graffiti background in the street art world springing from this.
However, there are a huge and rapidly growing number of women in the urban and street art world at this point in time; the argument of ‘there are just more men doing it’ is becoming less and less relevant. When you take that away you ultimately begin to see the cracks is the system which that tries to hide; the very nature of our institutional structures themselves and the view of reality and conclusions they impose on us.
When a man looks to the street art world and sees a higher representation of men, he will naturally have more of a sense of assumed inclusion which brings with it a wider confidence to approach, be a part of and succeed in that world. Where as a woman, being a product of her experience, will perhaps have a more tentative approach to inclusion and may be less confident or aggressive about entering these rooms of power, so to speak.
Role models are important and that’s why I feel like the most positive things to happen are when, for example, Nuart festival – a long running and hugely respected street art festival presented a panel discussion at Moniker recently titled ‘And you may ask yourself, Well, How did I get Here?’. The panel was formed of artists Hera, FAITH XLVII and Carrie Reichardt without the discussion being about the fact they are all women and without advertising it as a ‘women’s panel’. By doing this, all women panels become normalised; they are looked at as ‘street artists’ not ‘female street artists’ and that felt quietly important to me.
Perhaps this is because I’ve been sat down and invited to a festival with the pre-text of “I’ve been made aware of the inequality of gender in the programme of my festival so this year want to try and be more inclusive of women, so, would you like to come?”, which although on the one hand is, ‘yes, well done, that’s great and thank you’, you are also left with an air of being ‘token’ and wondering ‘am I valued for the work I’m doing or am I being used as a statistic?’. But obviously, however it’s approached, when a more equal line up is presented at a festival, this can really only be a positive force.
I feel very tentative and strangely under-qualified writing about this issue at all because I think I’ve been lucky in personally never really feeling directly held back by being female in the street art world (yet!). Even though I previously mentioned it, aspects like ‘confidence’ are genderless and totally specific to each person. Gendered hierarchies, however, are not, and we should be just as careful to work to dismantle these within the street art scene as in other areas of our lives or society. The compensation and treatment I’ve received in comparison to my male contemporaries during projects or festivals has always been equal, as far as I can see. But I am aware that my experience isn’t paralleled by everyone and that’s why it still needs to be talked about. I have big respect for artists such as Mariela Ajras and Milu Correch who have played a part in creating AMMurA which aims to call out the gender bias in the Argentinian street art scene, push for change and inspire more woman to share the platform.
Iryna Kanishcheva – Curator:
A big number of murals are painted by men because the majority of street artists are men. This is a fact. I don’t see any discrimination here. Why mostly men in street art? Possibly because of the nature of the work. Some jobs are designed more for men some for women with exceptions for both genders. However, many street art curators are women. Maybe because it doesn’t require to paint outside on the lift when it is hot, cold and raining. Obviously, to be a painter an artist needs to be strong enough physically.
I do not agree that men have better compensation and treatment. At least I personally have never experienced it. Neither in the art world in the USA (in all my projects everybody has the same conditions) nor when I was a Field Force Manager in a pharmaceutical company in Ukraine. In my opinion, the problem of disparity between men and women is exaggerated. I believe in difference of perception. For example, when a confident, business looking man with great speaking skills asks for sponsorship, he will get it most likely than a tiny girl in sneakers with an accent. The difference is in leadership skills, not a gender. That’s why I try to concentrate more on improving my language, knowledge and organizational skills instead of counting how much my competitors were paid and complaining about mistreatment.
Anne-Laure Lemaitre – Curator:
In my opinion it’s pretty obvious there are still, for now, more men than women street artists. And most renown contemporary street artists are still predominantly white men. That being said you have a plurality of influential women in this field at all era of the movement and it does feel like opportunities fall short of representation in general.
I don’t think there’s one answer to explain this disparity. The world is misogynistic. Art is misogynistic. It’s always been. There’s definitively progress but such patterns are difficult to break. It takes time. And it’s a vicious circle. Without proper representation, you can’t project yourself in a craft and own it as easily from a young age as you would organically if exposed to a bigger pool of role models.
Not giving more exposure to more incredible street artists from different origins/backgrounds/genders/races does not help expand street art as a craft amongst those ‘underrepresented’ demographics. There’s an assumption women can’t ‘take on’ bigger pieces which somehow stays entrenched in some people’s mind despite being proven wrong time and time again. And taking on challenging projects is also what helps you grow technically and creatively as an artist.
As for finances, financial disparity between men and women is embedded in all aspects of our society. Why would street art be ruled by any different dynamics? But without being given equal access to those bigger financial opportunities or projects, women street artists can’t raise their profile as swiftly and sustain themselves as effectively as they would if given a parity of opportunities at the ratio of their foot print/presence in the field.
Regardless, some women did carve a proper space and reputation for themselves and so many younger women artists are really pushing themselves and killing it right now. I remain hopeful things will evolve as we all consciously push to give them bigger and better opportunities to thrive.
Engy Al Garf – Artist:
I can’t really answer for NYC or anything outside of Egypt for that matter because I have yet to experience that, but in Egypt, the disparity between men and women in the street art business is especially true, not because men get more work than women necessarily but because women in Egypt doing anything in the “streets” are usually viewed in a certain way. You’re not really seen as an artist per se you’re more seen as labor worker or a varnisher or a painter (نقاش)… and being placed in that position as a woman especially in the Middle East is not of good standard.
A lot of women also fear harassment obviously, which I have been subject too, the streets are a mans territory and any woman seen there is subjected to harassment by default.
I haven’t experienced a difference in payment between myself and other male artists… but I have noticed that most of the work given to me were more girly or cutesy. I would be given projects in malls or restaurants sometimes painting ice creams and cupcakes and a lot of commercial projects because men would not paint these kind of things.
That’s the only forced disparity I have noticed, but other than that, it’s mostly women who don’t want to be in the streets.
Samantha Robison – Curator.
There are female artists of course but it is undoubtedly a male dominated industry. The issue is that women aren’t given the same opportunities as men and thus don’t excel as far. This however, is not an issue unique to street art or the art world in general, it is endemic in industries across the globe.
The people at the top in positions of power, deciding where money is allocated or who gets the opportunity, are majority male. Men in positions of power are statistically more likely to promote and allocate money to other men. When women are able to hold such positions of power, then and only then will things change. The equality starts at the top.
Also, women who achieve success and hold positions of power often experience stigma. Women need to support other women. I have been fortunate enough to work with some female powerhouses in the industry, but they struggled through a difficult road to get to where they are and they still struggle.
The important thing to remember is that anything is possible. Progress for women is possible. Regression is also possible. Let’s try to progress.
Milu Correch – Artist.
There is nothing “apparent” of the gender disparity in what people call “street art”. The recent video of AMMurA is evidence of it and dismantles the comfortable lie of the “outnumber theory”. What AMMurA declaims in Argentina could be easily found everywhere, even in progressive Europe. I wonder if AMMurA or new female painters organizations in the future will take the hard work of gathering the statistics they did in Argentina in the rest of the continents and countries.
Anonymous Artist:
I have been trying to ignore gender disparity as I follow my own path in the street art scene and work hard at my painting. However, I can’t deny its existence, and I can’t deny that I do care about the problems it creates.
As a woman who struggles with difficult menstrual cycles, it is often hard to explain why I might need a day or two off. This is especially true when the weather is perfect for street art, and the production team has its budget and deadlines.
This is one example of a situation in which I as a woman will find myself feeling guilty, embarrassed, and worried about being viewed as an underachiever compared to men. It’s weird to have to explain this whole situation to a dude, I know they say… ‘I got you’… but deep down you know that they do not understand you.
What I said above is super personal, but in fact it helped me think about feminism, though technically I do not label myself a feminist. This is because I know very well that both women and men are scared of jobs that I have done in the past that required a 4 story walls to be painted by hanging out the window in a metal basket. It is difficult and exhausting for both female and male street artists to maintain focus and paint even if you still have more 500 square meters to finish! I don’t want a difference of recognition, as females and males both can do quality street art work.
Sometimes I have observed situations where people act like if ‘you’ show yourself like a ‘macho alfa’ the ‘dudes’ around you will respect you, but if you are ‘female alfa’ the ‘dudes’ don’t always recognize this and show proper respect.
Sometimes if you give yourself a “shout out” it will also not be recognized by male street artists.
Another situation that occurs is when male artists are married or in serious relationships, they might feel they have to ignore female street artists. Then it makes me think this disparity isn’t only over a gender matter it is also a matter of how women are treated in society in general.
But it’s not always flowers and fraternity on the female side. For example, I have experienced the rigors of competition amongst female street artists. This sometimes keeps female street artists from being “sisters in paint.”
It seems to me as though the males have no trouble coming together as a team. It is weird to me how female curators often interact more with the male artists.
However, as women represent only 5% of the whole street art scene, female curators have been vital in keeping some female artists in work.
Yes it is a long path to equality, as we transition into more classifications, divisions, and categorizations. In the end, I realize inspiration is not female or male. I hope the result of females making street art will be to bring about eventual changes in the status of female artists. I don’t expect it to be a miraculously fast change.
Ann Lewis – Artist:
I think it’s absurd that just because there may be MORE men that they should be compensated with more money. True they get more opportunities but that’s not because there aren’t lot of very talented women artists. It’s because it stems from the hyper male-dominated graff world and so everything just follows those well worn grooves.
Women are taught to be small. Not upset the men who have the power to physically or professionally destroy them. It’s an unlearning many need to do but won’t. I don’t give a fuck and have been attacked so many times before, that it no longer stings.
It also blows my mind how women perpetuate this gross imbalance. I mentioned my op-Ed on Bowery boogie in summer in 2017 regarding the Bowery Houston wall. Much of my argument lies in that article.
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I wanted to thank the all the artists that I approached for being courageous and agreeing to talk about this issue. As you see above, some requested anonymity and some decided to stay silent for the fear of rocking the boat. One thing is certain that most of these artists and curators agree that the disparity still exist.
We can all attest that the debate over how and why men and women are different and what that means for their roles in society is far from settled.
