The
World Wide Web is an exceptional place for women to find inspirational
examples of the achievements of other women. As
Margaret Sanger wrote, "Woman
must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that
which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in
her which struggles for expression."
Thousands
of women have distinguished themselves in the arts.
Unfortunately, the recognition they’ve received hasn’t
matched their achievements. According to a fact sheet from Sonoma
State University:
Twenty
years into the women's art movement, women artists are still
struggling for visibility. It is well documented that they lack
significant support in the art world. According to the 1990 U.S.
study, Gender Discrimination in the Art Field:
*
50.7%
of all visual artists are female
*
Women
hold 53.1% of the degrees in art
*
Yet
80% of art faculty are males
*
Male artists make 68.6% of the total art income
*
Male
artists receive 73% of grants/ fellowships
*
Art museums average 15% women in curated exhibits, minority women
.003%.
*
4% of museum acquisitions are of work by women artists.
Since
antiquity, women artists have been creating alongside their male
counterparts. Many of these women were highly successful during their
lifetimes, yet have been omitted from art historical documentation.
For instance, before 1986, all editions of H.W. Janson's History of
Art, (the standard text used in introductory college art history
classes), included 3,000 male and no female artists. In the latest
version, published in 1991, only 19 women are represented.
According
to the Shulz
Information Center at Sonoma State University, “since 1970,
there has been a surge in scholarship on women artists, resulting in
the discovery of hundreds and thousands of women artists throughout
history and from all over the world.
It
was probably this situation that resulted in The National
Museum of Women in the Arts, the only museum in the world
dedicated exclusively to recognizing the contributions of women
artists.
An
organization called Women In
the Arts has as its purpose to produce and
sponsor programs that promote and affirm the creative talents and
technical skills of women in the visual, performing, and fine arts.
Web
sites like The Women's
Caucus for Art are committed to providing education about the
contributions of women. The
Caucus also affords opportunities for the exhibition of women's work
and publication of women's writing about art.
They’re also committed to seeing the inclusion of women in
the history of art.
Women
in the Arts
is a quarterly magazine devoted to promoting the achievements of women
in the visual arts, as well as in music, theater, dance, film, and
literature. The subject
of Women in Music has been deferred until a later article.
A
Celebration of Women Writers recognizes the
contributions of women writers throughout history. Women have written
almost every imaginable type of work: novels, poems, letters,
biographies, travel books, religious commentaries, histories, economic
and
scientific works. Their goal is to promote awareness of the
breadth and variety of women's writing.
Women
writers have been legendary since ancient times.
Sappho, one of the best-known early Greeks, celebrates the
marriage of one of her students in a delightful short poem:
TO
A YOUNG BRIDE
Like
an apple atop the topmost bough
That
the pluckers forgot somehow,
Nay,
forgot it not,
But
got it not,
For
none could get it till now.
Murasaki
Shikibu is the best-known writer to emerge from Japan's glorious Heian
period. Her novel, The Tale of Genji is considered one of the world's
finest and earliest novels. Some argue that Murasaki is the world's
first modern novelist.
The
Celebration of Women Writers has a massive list of all women writers,
arranged alphabetically and by period.
Many of the women writing between the 11th and 18th centuries
wrote on Christian subjects.
By
the late 18th and early 19th century, when Jane Austin came on the
scene, topics and concerns of women writers had changed dramatically.
All of Jane
Austin’s works, including commentaries, are available at on the
Celebration of Women Writers page devoted to writers living between
1701 and 1800.
The
site links to complete works of most of the 19th century women's
writers, including Louisa May Alcott, The Bronte Sisters, Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, Frances Burnett, Willa Cather, Emily Dickinson,
George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Helen Potter, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Edith Wharton, Ella Wilcox, Virginia Woolf, to mention just a few of
the many listed, with links to their works, on this site.
Virginia
Woolf may have been “spot on” when she wrote,
"Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so
many poems without signing them, was often a woman."
Unfortunately,
due to copyright restrictions, the works of the hundreds of 20th
century writers still can't be reproduced on the Web.
However, information about the writers and comments on
thousands of their works is available.
Despite
a dismal record of recognition for their accomplishments in the arts,
women have never stopped distinguishing themselves as artists and
writers.
Charlotte Perkins Gillman had it right when she wrote, "There
is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well
speak of a female liver."
