Gentle Women, Genius Men - A study into Implicit Gender Association with Artistic Occupations

It is already researched multiple times in what fields of work and research there is an underrepresentation (e.g. CEO’s) or overrepresentation (e.g. nurses) of females. Males are being associated with higher levels of occupations among different work fields. Although there is no research done yet to see whether the art sector is also gendered, gender stereotyping within this sector is not something g new. Kant already made a statement in 1790 where he suggests that there is something as the male “artistic genius”. There are considerably more successful male artists, but different elements of the art world (e.g. arts educations, still lives) are associated with femininity. Therefore, this research aims to study the paradox that exist within the art sector. On the one hand the artistic genius is associated with men, but on the other hand women are associated with different elements within the sector. The associations people make have an influence their behavior. This leads to issues such as boundaries when entering certain work fields or applying for certain jobs. By researching if and how occupations in the art sector are implicitly and explicitly associated with a specific gender, this study aims to make the boundary to enter smaller. By using implicit and explicit measures, this study will look for the reasons behind stereotyping. To measure the gendered biases, this research uses two different Implicit Association Tests (IAT). The first IAT looks for biases against artistic occupations versus non-artistic occupations and the second IAT focusses solely on artistic professions. The first hypothesis expected artistic jobs to be easier associated with femininity and non-artistic jobs quicker associated with masculinity. By confirming this hypothesis, this study validates that both genders, different educational backgrounds and ages all had no effect on this bias. This means that the gendered association is not limited to certain part of society, but it is a general stereotype made by a large group of people. The second hypothesis expected a stronger association between masculinity and responsibility profession compared to responsibility and female professions. By confirming this hypothesis and finding no significant effects from the background variables, this stereotype was also more general instead of linked to a specific group within society (e.g. age, gender, educational background). In summary, the biases of men having more responsibility in their profession and females being associated quicker with artistic occupations suggest that art is only associated with masculinity if there is an element of success involved.