Robert Genn, plein air painters
A letter to our photo editor, Joan Fenicle,
from artist Robert Genn
When all the artists are women
December 11, 2009
Dear Joan,
Last night I was giving a short talk and signing books at one of our local art clubs. I happened to notice no men were in the hall. The club has many male members, they assured me, but apparently they don’t come out on rainy nights. Not to listen to me, anyway. I wasn’t crestfallen–I was being sociologically informed. I’ve always noticed the 80/20 split in these organizations, but I knew the full-female thing was just around the corner. Anyway, it was a combined lecture and holiday-season windup, the shortbread was good, and no one asked me to dance.
If you don’t mind, I’m going to lay some statistics on you. Of the 82 new people who signed up for the Twice-Weekly letter yesterday, 56 were women. That’s 68%–which pretty well mirrors our current ratio of 67% women subscribers. Maybe this means females might be more willing to listen to males than males are. If true, one wonders what percentage of males is willing to listen to females.
Yesterday, among the people buying my new book on PayPal, 65% were women. Funnily, more men paid by check-in-the-mail than women. One might conclude women are what social scientists are now calling “early adopters.”
Fact is, women are more into growth, self-improvement, networking and learning than men. In a recent UNESCO study, more women than men got university degrees in 75 of 98 countries. This goes for most professions with the exception of engineering, computer science and math. Some fields are being overwhelmed with women. The vet school in Guelph, Ontario, for example, reports 80% of current grads are women.
The fact that boys lag behind girls in school is well known and not peculiar to our times. Studies show that as early as grade nine girls crave learning more than boys. Apparently the boys are now lagging later and later. The new statistics might be alarming to some. Roles may be reversing. Are men going to be stay-at-home-daddies while the women go out into the world and slay dragons? Is breeding going to grind to a halt? Are women going to be all the doctors, lawyers and artists? And by the way, do men just not want to listen because they already know it all and need to get on with it?
Best regards,
Robert
PS: “It’s not ridiculous to say women will have the upper hand in a way they haven’t in the past.” (Economist Ross Finnie, University of Ottawa)
Esoterica:
The “demographic bomb,” as it’s being called, may have its short term benefits, but the longer picture is not so rosy, particularly for Western cultures. If women are busy building empires, where will the new customers be coming from? One more statistic and I’ll shut up and get back to my easel. In my four top galleries it looks like 27% of living artists represented are women. Ten years ago it was 24%.
Painters Keys Twice Weekly Letters
To see Robert’s work go to: Robert Genn
Entries (RSS)
#1 by Katherine U. Porter at January 15th, 2010
Fairly recent data does paint a sad picture for working women. Women who were full-time wage and salary workers in 2007 earned 80% of what men earned (McCarty, 2008). It’s worse when you adjust for differing professions and educational levels. Vedantam (2007) reported that “women who work full time and have never taken time off to have children earn about 11 percent less than men with equivalent education and experience” (para. 4).
It doesn’t matter if a woman goes into non-traditional areas, either. Dice.com did a salary survey in 2007 that showed salaries for men in technology jobs increased by 2.4%, but stayed flat for women (Thibodeau, 2008). Although, a 2007 Computerworld survey showed the gap tends to shrink as tech workers rise into an organization’s managerial ranks; for example, men in project management made $101,569, while women made $100,436 (Thibodeau, para. 6).
Today’s devastated economy has put more women in the position of wage earner. “Women are on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time” (Cauchon, 2009, para. 1). However, they still only earn 77% of what men earn and men “still dominate higher-paying executive ranks” (Cauchon, para. 5). Once the economy recovers, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan expects men to recover more than 50% of the job market (Cauchon, para. 12). Sort of Rosie the Riveter all over again.
I guess women support the arts because they need to find beauty and mental stimulation somewhere.
References
Cauchon, D. (2009, September 3). Women gain as men lose jobs. USA Today. Retrieved January 15, 2009 from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-09-02-womenwork_N.htm
McCarty, M. (2008, November 7). Salary stats: Women vs. men. The Washington Post. Retrieved January 15, 2009 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/06/AR2008110602982.html
Thibodeau, P. (2008, January 30). Tech pay gap between men and women grew last year: But pay gap narrows as workers move toward managerial ranks, according to Dice job survey. Computerworld. Retrieved January 15 2009 from http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9060098/Tech_pay_gap_between_men_and_women_grew_last_year
Vedantam, S. (2007, July 30). Salary, gender and the social cost of haggling. The Washington Post. Retrieved January 15, 2009 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/29/AR2007072900827.html