We’ve come a long way, baby . . . maybe?

My five year old son is a little competitive.  (I have no idea where he gets that.  Okay, maybe I do.)  During his swimming lesson last weekend, I noticed that swimming alongside a more advanced girl was motivating him to try harder.  As I watched them swimming back and forth, Chester with a float belt, lagging behind Little Miss Float Belt-Free Swimming Star, I began to feel a bit sorry for her.  She was clearly a tad competitive herself and was enjoying leading the pack.  The scene reminded me of my own athletic prowess as a little girl.  I played soccer and was always one of the top players on my team.  I was faster, more agile and scored more goals than all the boys.  I loved it.  Sadly, it was short-lived.  One year, the soccer season started up and something had changed.  Suddenly and inexplicably my superiority had evaporated.   No matter how much I practiced or how hard I played, the boys were pulling ahead.  They were faster and stronger, and while I could still out-play most of the girls on my team, I found myself doing a lot of watching the boys from the bench. 

This course of events was devastating for a competitive little tomboy, and particularly one that was being raised to believe that the possibilities for her were endless.  It was a girl-power era; my parents, like many at the time, brought me up to believe I could do and be anything.  Title IX, the famous law stating, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance . . . “ was enacted in 1972, just a month and a half before I was born.  I played sports, I was in Girl Scouts, I was encouraged to try anything I had an interest in trying and I was interested in lots.  I often joke that I’m the only kid who begged to take piano lessons and wasn’t allowed to.  I’m sure my mom would have been happy to let me take piano lessons if it had been humanly possible to fit another thing into my schedule.  While most of my friends growing up had similar experiences, I recall one elementary school friend who wasn’t allowed to be in Girl Scouts because it (gasp) “taught women to be independent.”  Oh, the horror.  My mom was skeptical of that particular friend and nearly had a nuclear meltdown when I came home from spending the night at her house once saying, “Mom, is it true what Leslie’s mom said?  She said we have to be married by the time we’re 16 or all the good men will be gone.”    

I very much grew up believing that I could do anything a boy could do (well accept that writing your name in the snow while you pee thing, which I’m still insanely jealous of because it sounds ridiculously fun and entertaining).  After The Soccer Heartbreak, I eventually accepted that, in the athletics arena, no amount of practicing or conditioning or sheer will would make up for the physical advantages of being a boy.  I moved on and focused my energy on other interests – music, art, dance and academics.  I never felt discriminated against or discouraged in any classes.  I was never shy about speaking up and voicing my opinions in school settings and felt supported by my teachers.  It was the go-girl ‘80s and I basically got the same message at school that I got at home – you can do and be anything.  As a result, I felt lucky to be growing up in a time when girls had the same opportunities as boys.  I listened in horror to my mom’s stories of limited choices of classes and extracurricular activities.  I couldn’t believe she was forced to wear dresses to her college classes, even in the bitter cold of the Eastern Washington winters.  I went to college, studied what I wanted to study, discovered a field that I loved and plowed ahead into my career, full of ambition and energy. 

My experience was similar to that which Manhattan Institute Fellow Kay Hymowitz documents in her recent book “Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys.”  She argues that among pre-adults (pre-adulthood is described as the modern stage of life that encompasses the 20s and early 30s), women are the “first sex.”

“Women graduate from college in greater numbers than men, with higher grade point averages; more extracurricular experiences, including study abroad; and as most professors tell it, more confidence, drive, and plans for the future. They are aggressively independent; they don't need to rely on any man, that's for sure. These strengths carry them through much of their twenties, when they are more likely to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace, to be buying apartments and otherwise in aspiring mode. In an increasing number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends.”  

Hymowitz is careful to point out that she is speaking about young women in their 20s and early 30s.  Apparently out-achieving and out-earning drops off when women enter mid-career.  This trend seemed strangely familiar to me, calling to mind my childhood soccer devastation and that’s where I got more interested.

I ended up in a field – arts administration – that is dominated, in terms of numbers, by women.  (According to a nationwide study conducted by Americans for the Arts in 2001, 78% of the staffs of local arts agencies are female.)  Early in my career, I never felt any sort of gender discrimination and the young women I know in the arts now don’t talk about feeling it either.  As I advanced, I began to notice that most of my good colleague friends – fellow managers and directors – were men.  I didn’t think too much of it at first; I fit in just fine - it was like the tomboy soccer years all over again.  Unfortunately, the analogy extends beyond just hanging out and “playing” with a lot of boys. 

Now that I’m what you might call solidly into mid-career territory, I’m noticing an uncomfortably familiar dynamic.  No matter how hard I work, the “boys” seem to be pulling ahead again, and this time it can’t be explained by physical advantages like speed and strength.  The higher ranking (and higher paying) leadership positions in the arts seem to be disproportionately filled with men, despite the fact that the majority of arts administration professionals are women. 

Could it be that in a field where women outnumber men so significantly, women are still running into the proverbial glass ceiling?  I decided to conduct my own informal research, beginning with the Puget Sound region where I live and work.  I compiled a list of the “major” arts organizations in Seattle.  My list isn’t definitive, but it’s a good sample.  Let’s take a look at the gender of Executive or Managing Directors:

-Pacific Northwest Ballet: Male

-Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs: Male (recently hired to replace the former director who was also male)

-4Culture: Male

-Seattle Theater Group: Male

-Seattle Art Museum: Male (just resigned, position currently vacant)

-Seattle Symphony: Male

-Seattle Opera: Female

-A Contemporary Theatre: Male

-Seattle Repertory Theatre: Male

-Artsfund: Male

Of ten of the largest, most influential arts organizations in Seattle, nine have men in the highest staff leadership positions.  Wow, that’s 90%.  Pretty interesting for a field filled with women.  What about our state arts commission?  The Director of the Washington State Arts Commission is Kris Tucker, a woman.  If you put Kris into the mix, that brings the percentage of women in the top position to a whopping 18%.  Next I decided to look specifically at the field of performing arts presenters in Western Washington: 

-Mount Baker Theatre in Bellingham: Male

-Kirkland Performance Center: Male

-Edmonds Center for the Arts: Male

-Admiral Theatre in Bremerton: Female (While the Executive Director is a woman, the Business Manager who handles the majority of day-to-day leadership in the organization is a man.)

-Broadway Center in Tacoma: Male

-Washington Center in Olympia: Male (interim director filling in after the exit of a long-time male Executive Director)

-Columbia Theater in Longview: Male

-Capitol Theatre in Yakima: Male

-Meany Hall/UW World Series: Female (recently hired to replace a long-time male director)  

Huh.  This seems to be a pretty strong trend.  Of nine of the major performing arts centers/presenters in Western Washington, seven are led by men.  If I count the male business manager of the Admiral Theatre and had done this tally a couple of months ago before the new director of Meany Hall had been hired, I would have come up with 100% men in top leadership positions.

I had a feeling I was onto something but I was stunned when I actually counted it up.  Surprisingly, there seems to be a solid gender bias in the arts administration world here in super liberal Seattle/Western Washington.  So is it just us?  What’s going on throughout the rest of the country?  As a sample, I looked at the Directors of state arts agencies and United States Urban Arts Federation agencies (USUAF - the arts commissions and councils of the roughly 60 largest cities in the nation.)

Of the 48 state agencies for which I could find staff information on-line, 28 are led by female Executive Directors.  That’s 59%.  Of the 56 USUAF agencies, 30 have a woman in the lead staff position – 54%.  Both more balanced figures than we have here in Western Washington.  (Perhaps a dark cloud of gender bias hangs over us like the stubborn gray hangs over Puget Sound?)  While the national figures are more promising, they still do not reflect how significantly women outnumber men in the field.  

Just as I was starting to feel more positive about the rest of the country, I came across another finding of Americans for the Arts’ 2001 Local Arts Agency Salary and Benefits Survey.  While the staffs of local arts agencies are 78 percent female, at the president/executive director level, depending on budget size, women make anywhere from 11 to 27 percent less than their male counterparts.  The study is ten years old, but Randy Cohen, Vice President of Research and Policy at Americans for the Arts notes that there have not been discernible changes in gender make up or compensation in local arts agencies over the past ten years.

Younger women aren’t noticing gender bias (I didn’t either) because it isn’t happening to them yet.  As Kay Hymowitz notes, young women are often out-achieving and out-earning their male counterparts.  And the arts world is heavily dominated by women professionals.  Apparently we make excellent assistants and program coordinators and marketing and development staff, and mid-level managers, but what is happening with those executive leadership positions?  Why aren’t more of the talented, hard-working, ambitious women that fill the ranks of arts organizations being promoted into top positions?

As a society, we seem very willing to put women on an equal playing field when it’s about hard work, dedication and doing a good job for someone else.  Who doesn’t love an employee who is smart, highly educated, hard working and motivated?  That is exactly what girls of my generation were trained to be.  Unfortunately, those traits only seem to get us so far.  When it comes to leadership – actually running the show – women are largely being kept out of the top ranks.  We’re sitting on the bench, watching the boys play, and when we do get a shot, we’re getting paid less.  Organizations are overlooking half of the talent pool – and significantly more than half in the female-dominated arts field. 

Is it that we don’t want to believe gender discrimination is still happening?  I recently attended a panel presentation on arts participation.  Specifically, the session addressed how arts organizations can respond to rapidly changing demographics and patterns of arts participation among diverse and immigrant audiences.  At some point, during the question and answer period, somebody brought up the fact that, in a session focused on increasing ethnically diverse participation, there was only one African-American on the panel.  A brief discussion ensued.  This struck me as odd considering that the presenters consisted of two Caucasian men, a Hispanic man and the African-American woman, with an Asian man as the moderator.  The panel was actually quite diverse, ethnically speaking.  What nobody brought up or even noticed was that of five panel participants, only one was a woman.   

So what’s going on?  Why is this happening?  If anybody has ideas, I’d love to hear them.  Apparently we’ve still got a long way to go, baby.