Interesting article on sexism in photography.

[cambsno]

Well, considering the huge change in attitudes over the last few decades, why is it do you think that there aren't as many woman in the photographic industry? Perhaps they're simply not as good photographers as men?

I don't know. It could be down to how popular photography is? Am guessing for togs unlike most jobs it starts as a hobby and leads into a job. If the male to female ratio at hobby stage is for example 3:1 then its probably not unreasonable to see a similar ratio in work.

Do we know what the ratio is on TP. It certainly seems more male dominated.

 

[Byker28i]

Women however are under represented in the photographic industry. Is this due to sexism in the industry, or a lack of interest by women, or both ?
The statement above seems fair enough on all counts to push women's photography forward.

Have you got figures to support this? As I've previously said, theres a huge percentage of women on photography courses. Brighton a couple of years ago had around 80% on their degree course.
Are they under represented in the whole, how about over the age ranges. Is it changing as these younger people are entering the industry. Do they go for other media related jobs if the jobs just aren't available now or it';s hard to get a foot in?

Now if you all stopped walking around with big lenses on your cameras, shooting the lighting models the photography show lectures can be quite interesting. There was one a few years ago on this very subject and I've found a write up. Interesting read...

https://www.redeye.org.uk/opinion/where-are-all-the-female-photographers

 

[Byker28i]

Oh and Plymouth Uni had a woman only event...
https://www.plymouthart.ac.uk/latest/blog/women-in-photography-conference-2017/

Which is a shame it wasn't open to all

 

[cambsno]

Oh and Plymouth Uni had a woman only event...
https://www.plymouthart.ac.uk/latest/blog/women-in-photography-conference-2017/

Which is a shame it wasn't open to all

That's equality for you!!! No joke, one of the local business clubs recently was doing a thing on equality in the workplace but this was a female only club!!!

 

[Orangecroc]

Oh and Plymouth Uni had a woman only event...
https://www.plymouthart.ac.uk/latest/blog/women-in-photography-conference-2017/

Which is a shame it wasn't open to all

That's equality for you!!! No joke, one of the local business clubs recently was doing a thing on equality in the workplace but this was a female only club!!!

Both of these things are equally bad, if not worse as they damage any attempt to get equality.

 

[Kell]

All of these things are big issues at the moment. I think it's hard to appreciate how overlooked some areas of our society have been without being a part of that group.

We get agents in weekly with books for commercial photographers and women photographers seem to woefully underrepresented in most cases. A lot of the agents are women, but that too is historical as most advertising creatives are male - and a little bit of flirting helped the female agents sell their photographers.

As mentioned above, creative departments are mostly male. We're also trying to attract more women into the industry. Things are changing, but unfortunately at a glacial pace.

Perhaps women photographers are getting fed up of being overlooked for their male counterparts and either can't make it work financially and move to other industries, or don't get as far as trying to make it commercially in the first place as they can't get their first job. The last photographer we used was female, but the previous 5 (guess) were probably male. Is this indicative of the ratio in the industry at present? Unsure.

What I would say is that of the weddings I've been to over the past 20 years, I'd say it was nearer 50/50 male/female split. Perhaps that's to do with the fact that it will most often be the bride making the decision.

We never set out to choose a gender, we start off with a creative idea, and get shown books of photographers that work in that style. I'd like to say that's EXACTLY how our decision-making process works, but unconscious bias is just that.

 

[DemiLion]

What I would say is that of the weddings I've been to over the past 20 years, I'd say it was nearer 50/50 male/female split.

Same sex marriage aside, you'd sort of hope that might be the case!

 

[kendo1]

The last two weddings I've been to, the photographers were female- and the assistants.
The three previous to these were male...

It's the results that matter.

 

[Andrew Benbow]

The last two weddings I've been to, the photographers were female- and the assistants.
The three previous to these were male...

It's the results that matter.

I got married over 20 years ago and we had a female photographer (divorced now but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the photographer's fault), I didn't care then and I don't care now, the results were exactly what we wanted.

 

[sirch]

It's interesting to see how many women have posted in this thread,

 

[ancient_mariner]

It's interesting to see how many women have posted in this thread,

They probably have better things to do.

Perception of equality is curious. I saw an article talking about equality in STEM a couple of weeks back, suggesting that Brazil (IIRC - think it was on the BBC) was showing the west up in terms of equality, because 85% of people working in science there were women.

 

[Orangecroc]

They probably have better things to do.

Perception of equality is curious. I saw an article talking about equality in STEM a couple of weeks back, suggesting that Brazil (IIRC - think it was on the BBC) was showing the west up in terms of equality, because 85% of people working in science there were women.

85% isn't equality...

 

[Byker28i]

As mentioned above, creative departments are mostly male.

I used to work in a media and broadcast company. Most creative departments I came across were mostly female. Publicity, marketing, demo artists, huge female representation. Not so much in the bosses, but certainly throughout all the other creative departments.

 

[ancient_mariner]

85% isn't equality...

Well spotted. And equality isn't what everyone wants.

I used to work in a media and broadcast company. Most creative departments I came across were mostly female. Publicity, marketing, demo artists, huge female representation. Not so much in the bosses, but certainly throughout all the other creative departments.

I've worked in life sciences all my life, and women have been heavily and more than equally represented in every business I've worked for.

 

[Byker28i]

Most of the women I worked with in those departments had some sort of media/art degree, so is it they aren't going into photography per say but other disciplines

 

[ancient_mariner]

Most of the women I worked with in those departments had some sort of media/art degree, so is it they aren't going into photography per say but other disciplines

Maybe it's mostly men who are suckers enough to believe they can have a career in photography?

 

[Phil V]

Isn’t the article about women in photography in fashion and in publications?

And don’t those industries have terrible issues across the board (not just photography)?

I don’t think there’s a ‘photography’ industry problem at all, but some related industries have massive problems.

As above... sex sells, and in media both men and women are used as sex objects, the difference starts with age, where older successful men still have sex appeal but older women are considered not to.

But the gender of a photographer, I don’t believe the question exists.

 

[Kell]

Oops.

 

[Kell]

I used to work in a media and broadcast company. Most creative departments I came across were mostly female. Publicity, marketing, demo artists, huge female representation. Not so much in the bosses, but certainly throughout all the other creative departments.

I’m trying to give you a perspective from the inside of a current ad agency. The article specifically mentions ad campaigns and why it’s possible that advertisers are guilty/responsible for the lack of female photographers or sexism in commercial advertising shots.

I cannot say which creative departments you’re talking about but i’m specifically talking about UK ad agencies. I’ve been in the business for over 20 years and it’s probably ‘better’ now than it ever was, and in our currentl department of 42 there are 7 women.

My previous agency was much smaller and in 7 creatives, there was 1 woman.

My previous one to that was a lot bigger - probably about the size of the agency i’m at now - and there were just two.

The one before that, in a creative dept of around 50 I can only think of four female creatives.

My first agency, there were none.

I also had placements at some of the big agencies of the 90s. Saatchi and Saatchi, Leo Burnett, GGT, Simons Palmer. In almost every instance women were in the account management and planning depts, but rarely in creative roles. And in every agency I’ve been in, not a single one had a woman in charge of the creative department.

Also, for the record, they’re mostly white too.

 

[DemiLion]

Isn’t the article about women in photography in fashion and in publications?

No. It's about the gender of the photographer.

 

[Phil V]

No. It's about the gender of the photographer.

In those spheres?

 

[Phil V]

The membership here would show similar ‘statistics’ yet there’s no bias, we’re a completely open community, so why does this appeal to far more men than women?

I don’t believe it’s done on purpose, I don’t even believe it’s a consequence of some negative behaviour, it’s simply that more men than women choose to waste too much time on forums generally.

There’s interesting questions about women’s attitudes to other women. In social photography the vast majority of images are bought by women, in fact if you consider all advertising, I’d suggest most photography is created ‘for’ women, so why are men trusted to create more of that imagery than women?

 

[kendo1]

The membership here would show similar ‘statistics’ yet there’s no bias, we’re a completely open community, so why does this appeal to far more men than women?

I don’t believe it’s done on purpose, I don’t even believe it’s a consequence of some negative behaviour, it’s simply that more men than women choose to waste too much time on forums generally.

There’s interesting questions about women’s attitudes to other women. In social photography the vast majority of images are bought by women, in fact if you consider all advertising, I’d suggest most photography is created ‘for’ women, so why are men trusted to create more of that imagery than women?

What Every Woman Wants

 

[HoppyUK]

As far as the male bias on here is concerned, I think there's a simple answer. And likewise the membership of camera clubs, readership of photo magazines, and the kind of customers you're most likely to bump into in Jessops - we're gadget lovers, gear heads and knob twiddlers . As a species, women don't suffer so much from GAS - they get SAS and HAS instead

The most popular forum on here is Equipment, and by some margin.

 

[Phil V]

...
The most popular forum on here is Equipment, and by some margin.

And still a fair proportion of talk photography and talk beginners is ‘equipment’ questions.

 

[Byker28i]

I’m trying to give you a perspective from the inside of a current ad agency. The article specifically mentions ad campaigns and why it’s possible that advertisers are guilty/responsible for the lack of female photographers or sexism in commercial advertising shots.

I cannot say which creative departments you’re talking about but i’m specifically talking about UK ad agencies. I’ve been in the business for over 20 years and it’s probably ‘better’ now than it ever was, and in our current department of 42 there are 7 women.

15 years in Broadcast, media and post production. Huge representation of women in that sector, as I said, quite a lot with media or arts degrees, so maybe they aren't going into photography/advertising but other places to use their skills.

 

[droj]

knob twiddlers

Yes - mostly men, granted.

 

[StewartR]

Here's a slightly different take on sexism in photography.

Women Photograph is an initiative that launched this year "to elevate the voices of female visual journalists" (as it says on their website). Every Monday on their Twitter account (@womenphotograph) they review the "Photos of the week" features from a number of well-known media outlets and classify how many of the photos were taken by women. They call it the Week in Pictures Gender Breakdown and it's tagged #WPGB if you want to look at it in more detail.

Here's this week's survey:


One interesting aspect of this is that these results are very consistent. It's quite rare for any of the features they review to score more than 20%, except for the BBC which frequently scores exactly 50%. It seems quite likely that the BBC is applying some sort of quota regime in its selection of pictures, because to score exactly 50% so frequently would be highly unlikely if the picture selection process were gender-blind. Are gender quotas in a field like this a good thing or not? Discuss.

 

[Phil V]

One interesting aspect of this is that these results are very consistent. It's quite rare for any of the features they review to score more than 20%, except for the BBC which frequently scores exactly 50%. It seems quite likely that the BBC is applying some sort of quota regime in its selection of pictures, because to score exactly 50% so frequently would be highly unlikely if the picture selection process were gender-blind. Are gender quotas in a field like this a good thing or not? Discuss.

I think it's more complicated than 'quotas', it's a fact of life that when we're hiring people we look to hire 'us', now that has both positive and negative outcomes for a business, on the + side it makes consistent branding easy, on the - side it has the risk of built in irrelevance, studying Lean organisations would find that successful organisations are the ones good at challenging the status quo.

As for 'quotas'; they don't have to be as prescribed as people assume. Large progressive organisations (like the BBC) will insist that all their recruitment staff undergo 'unconscious bias' training, which should design out the habit of hiring and promoting 'ourselves' (people like us)

I'll bet there are similar discussions on Chef websites as we speak, where the vast majority of 'top chefs' are male, but I bet if you ask the top chef's to list their influences, it'd be a male female mix.

Whilst 'most' pro photographers are male, my bookshelf contains:
Jane Bown
Eve Arnold
Annie Leibovitz
Steve McCurry
Salgado
Bob Carlos Clarke
(only those in full books - I'm not creating bias there are other anthologies which would at a guess be gender biased)

 

[Eloise]

One interesting aspect of this is that these results are very consistent. It's quite rare for any of the features they review to score more than 20%, except for the BBC which frequently scores exactly 50%. It seems quite likely that the BBC is applying some sort of quota regime in its selection of pictures, because to score exactly 50% so frequently would be highly unlikely if the picture selection process were gender-blind. Are gender quotas in a field like this a good thing or not? Discuss.

It depends would be my reply Stewart. Ideally pictures should be selected with no regard to the photographer - they should be the best photographs out there. Now if 50% of the photographers who send in images are female, then you should expect 50% of those selected to be taken by females. However if only 10% of the photographers are female: then to use 50% from females means that either females who work professionally are much better than their male colleagues (which could be true by dint of natural selection in that only the best survive) or there is a negative bias away from male photographers and that is unfair; but some positive bias can be productive in getting people to get over stereotypes.

Someone above mentioned the Plymouth College of Arts "Women in Photography" conference and suggested it was somehow sexist. But you're missing the point ... they are about showing women (and men) that women can be just as good in these fields. Its the antithesis of the background "photographers are men" feelings you get bombarded with day in day out.

The problem with inequality and sexism is that there are no easy answer.

Its very easy for (especially middle aged white men - no offence intended to anyone posting here) to sit there preaching that there is no problem ... but in a way that is part of the problem. I'm sure (giving you the benefit of the doubt) you don't mean to ... but many of the posts in this thread can come over with a somewhat "stop complaining women, there is no problem" feeling. That could be why very few (none apart from me?) women have commented in this thread. No I don't have experience of professional photography world, but I do have experience of the world generally.

The problems aren't in your face ... its not that women are somehow prevented from being photographers; but there was much criticism of Nikon focusing only on male photographers and of Fujifilm for using topless models (iirc) at their camera launch (and rightly so) and such behaviour discourages women. Its a background, almost subconscious: "this world is not for you" which is repeated again and again and again.

 

[Nod]

Dodgy blokes with big lenses trying to take photos of the models on the lighting stands?

More like dodgy blokes leering at the models on the stands through long lenses while clicking merrily away - shooting several hundred "snaps" at a stretch without reloading their camera...

 

[Byker28i]

Thinking bookshelves, looking at the reading list for my degree course, included Photography - Liz Wells, On Photography Susan Sontag, the photograph as contempory art - Charlotte Cotton, Behind the image - Anna Fox, Context and Narrative - maria short... I could keep going. So many of the good reference books written by women

 

[jakeblu]

More like dodgy blokes leering at the models on the stands through long lenses while clicking merrily away - shooting several hundred "snaps" at a stretch without reloading their camera...

You know that by...? Personal experience?

 

[woof woof]

I used to think that any form of discrimination or quota system was wrong including positive discrimination but these days even as a white male and therefore a member of the group possibly most likely to be positively discriminated against I'm not so sure. I still hate the idea of discrimination and hope for the day no one sees a need for it.

 

[Kell]

This is a strange one and it comes under a lot of criticism because in any industry you should hire the best person for that job.

The criticism of quotas is that if you're forced to hire a certain percentage of people from one group it may mean that in some instances you have to overlook someone who's great at the job and hire someone that isn't. Or at least isn't as quite as good.

The problem with that sort of thinking is that it discourages people from those groups from trying in the first place. And the reality is that if you're feeling any way put out by positive discrimination, then you have just the smallest inkling of what it's like to be overlooked because of something you can't change.

I have to say when I was younger and more ignorant, I'd have said positive discrimination was just as bad as discrimination. But it's not. Not by a long way.

 

[Byker28i]

Someone above mentioned the Plymouth College of Arts "Women in Photography" conference and suggested it was somehow sexist. But you're missing the point ... they are about showing women (and men) that women can be just as good in these fields. Its the antithesis of the background "photographers are men" feelings you get bombarded with day in day out.

How is it now sexist if men aren't allowed to attend?

Certainly on my degree course there were no male/female photographer/artist separations, just talking about the art.

 

[woof woof]

I have to say when I was younger and more ignorant, I'd have said positive discrimination was just as bad as discrimination. But it's not. Not by a long way.

There's no doubt in my mind that positive discrimination is a horrible thing and it'll do real damage to people and create anger and resentment and fuel divisions in our society. The only crumb of comfort is that is does a bit of good too. Roll on the day we don't see a need for it.

 

[jakeblu]

Postitive discrimination, quotas or whatever you want to call them wouldn't be needed if the best person always got the job, unfortunately that isn't always the case. Many are over looked simply because of gender, ethnicity, age or sexual orientation. Until those issues are resolved them positive discrimination has its place.

 

[Kell]

There's no doubt in my mind that positive discrimination is a horrible thing and it'll do real damage to people and create anger and resentment and fuel divisions in our society. The only crumb of comfort is that is does a bit of good too. Roll on the day we don't see a need for it.

The only people it creates resentment in are those people that are happy to ignore all other forms of discrimination. It's essentially a taste of their own medicine.

Of course, it would be amazing if the day ever came that every group was fairly represented in all roles. But you have to look at the root cause of why there's a discrepancy.

It may be the case the photography as a whole isn't an appealing career to women in general. But it's more likely that women see it as a 'blokey' old-boys' club that's almost impossible to enter.

There is a definite aura of pervy old man about 'amatuer photographers' that I imagine puts many younger women off. The Nudes section on this site is probably a great example of that.

 

[Byker28i]

There is a definite aura of pervy old man about 'amatuer photographers' that I imagine puts many younger women off. The Nudes section on this site is probably a great example of that.

And yet there's areas that a woman definitely has an advantage in, usually in not being seen as a 'pervy bloke'.