what do the artists of the top 10 most expensive paintings in history have in common that's right they're all men in fact when you look at the amount of current artists represented by galleries in europe and north america it's only just one in ten that are female it can often be a bit dispersing when you're pulling out rack and screen after screen it's just a sea of male faces looking back at you and white a certain class now given that 63 of undergraduates are women and 66 of postgraduates in creative arts and design are women this seems really outdated and wrong why then are so few female artists represented in the world of art and are these figures finally starting to shift [Music] like so much inequality in our society the male skew in the art world has a long history for so long male art has been put on a pedestal the systems in place institutionally have really colluded against the women being able to follow those artistic training and pathways whether it's kind of child care commitments or whether that's access to education take art education from the 16th to the 19th centuries women were barred from studying the nude model which really formed the basis of any academic training drawing the male nude was not seen to be um a womanly ladylike thing to do although the ra had two female founders the academy only allowed female life drawing classes in 1883 after various petitions and even then we're told models should be partially draped and clothed with a pair of bathing drawers and a loin cloth this was hugely prohibitive particularly given how dominated art at the time was by pieces depicting the human form specific prestigious institutions didn't let women study at all london's royal academy of art only opened its doors to women in 1860 when one laura herford was accidentally admitted after submitting work under her initials lh this exclusion of women from education meant that they were often excluded from entire art movements take the bauhaus though women were allowed to study and its founder claimed there was no difference between the beautiful and the strong sex women were accepted into the bauhaus but they were pushed towards so-called craft women were pigeon-holed in this way throughout history these crafts were more seen as decorative than art but in recent years they've been gaining recognition as important artworks in their own right think about embroideries and tapestries i mean they're exquisite when you get up close to them phoebe anna jaquere for example if you look at her embroidery work which are on a scale of a large painting you can really appreciate the skill not as an embroiderer but as an artist historical crafts were more than just technical and decorative often raising challenging or emotional subjects this specimen table by jane and mary parmenter based on their experience traveling around europe on what was known as a grand tour is an intricate arrangement of shells and micro mosaics around a central plaque a response to the death of their sister stating life shall triumph over death when women were able to work in more traditionally artistic mediums there were issues with the legacy and longevity of the work there's a sort of historical effacement of their work so what they were producing wasn't considered worthy of keeping and looking after and kind of having that legacy so it doesn't survive in the art collections because over generations people have thought that it didn't have that value this all has a huge knock-on effect on which historical works by female artists galleries can acquire and display today it's not just us choosing and it's not just us buying that there aren't a lot of works out there particularly works you can show permanently and the ones that are coming up on the market everybody's going for them so the competition is huge so we don't have a large budget for acquiring material so if we're trying to fill in those historical gaps we're kind of being priced out the market a little bit [Music] related to all this is the treatment of female artists as individuals women have often been a kind of footnote seen as the means the partner of the lover of their own integrity and their own abilities have been therefore underplayed or neglected completely leonore carrington was commonly referred to as being max ernst muse but she has called this claim saying she didn't have time to be amused i was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist but she is being seen as now she has an incredible collection all over the world [Music] jumping forward to the present day the contemporary art world continues to be influenced by historic inequality name recognition becomes a kind of tool that people are using to make decisions and it's those big names those kind of well-established art historical figures who bring the punters in but of course if women have not had visibility they are less recognized by virtue of that i suppose it's a kind of cycle as francis morris of the tate modern says we really have to stop celebrating creativity depending on how it's monetized by the art market as it so inhibits progress and representation to give you a sense of how gender-skewed art markets are of 106 billion dollars spent on art at auctions in the last decade work made by women made up only four billion dollars or two percent and over those two percent half of all sales of female art were pieces by just five artists [Applause] so new decade we have to ask are things finally changing oh that's content i would say it's slow you feel like you're getting somewhere and then you realize that your eight-year-old daughter is confronted with things that you were confronted with when you were a and you just think come on there are positive steps being made all around the world more and more women artists are being collected the more contemporary art there is definitely a move to collecting more female artists the art world is starting to see more women in more senior positions we've got you know really important role models within the sector who are making you know great change a growing female population of staff who are talking about it a lot there's also a broader cultural shift towards equality and representation and opportunity which is putting pressure on galleries and the art makers to focus more on female artists attitudes are changing it is the question everybody asks where are the female artists there's definitely a sea change in society post me too movement i think that had a massive impact because we just had enough of not talking about it but of course there is still a long way to go although we can to an extent rewrite historical art in terms of making the women who were making art visible we can't change the historic gender imbalance it's a shame that it's now hindsight that we're recognizing these artists it's difficult because ultimately you can't share what you don't have but it means that you have to do a lot with what you do have so you have to make sure that um you're thinking about how you're presenting work it does mean there are kind of gaps in the historical record uh which we're constantly trying to kind of research and fill in but it's it's a difficult task sometimes but there is hope that the decisions we make now about what we collect which artists we give opportunities to we can and will change the landscape for future generations i am optimistic about change because i think that there's a collective understanding not just within the art sector but i think within the world at large in terms of both acquisition and programming that these artists and those forms of art are getting a higher and higher profile i think that's really positive let us know who your favorite female artists are in the comments below and check out our channel for more videos in the series you