Who Gets Represented? Thoughts from the Swimming Pool.

I had a great 2500 m swim this morning.  I was thinking about my research during the swim.

I'm getting more and more interested in the notion of masculinist and female values.  I don't think female values are clearly defined.  So how can female values be defined?  I wondered about asking people who work at the Fawcett Society, whether they had any views.  Or what about the people at the East End Women's Museum?  Who else might have views on what they think female values are?  What about the women who are Friends of the Shedio?

I've been thinking about the gendering of media.  I need to read around this.  I'm clear that some media are gendered, and known to be gendered - oils and stone sculpture are masculine; watercolours and textiles are feminine.  But what about media like print (does gendering vary across different print media?). What about media like cigarette cards?  Does scale matter? - do smaller media link with women and larger media with men?  Or is there no such correlation?

What sorts of people have been represented in the 20th Century Gallery at National Portrait Gallery? Katherine Tyrrell has written a great blog post on her take on the new rehang - she is unimpressed.  Too much grey and beige on the walls, too much gold framing, too many image sited too high on the wall. Too little natural light.  OK for representation of gay people, far too little representation of ethnic minorities. She does not like the chronological layout, and preferred the subject clustering (like Family) of the previous hang. I think the new rehang is better than the previous, because there is a wider range of people represented, and far greater proportion of women.  But I've been thinking about what women I'd like to see represented.  The NPG policy states

"The Gallery is particularly interested to acquire works which reflect the diversity of British history and culture and highlight achievement in a wide range of different fields, from sporting success, entertainment, science, the arts, business, politics and intellectual life. "

Are these criteria masculinist?  I think they may be.  I think men are more likely to be competitive, (or rewarded for being competitive?) and sports certainly pay professional sportsmen more than professional women (eg football!) and prize money is more for men than women (eg tennis! And the argument that women play 3 sets whereas men play 5 could be resolved - just make them equal sets!). My brief investigations into entertainment show male domination, showing more of female roles depicting typically younger and more decorative, or supporting roles.

Women can be seen in science, but I'm not sure our society promotes their achievements in the same way as men.  A classic example of this was the woman who identified the helix structure of DNA, had her discovery shared with a competitor's team,  without her permission, and was only very recently credited with this as her discovery.  If I include medicine in science, I can remember quite a few large portraits of leading male surgeons, but none of midwives, female surgeons or supporting functions like radiography, physiotherapy or occupational therapy.  There's nothing in there about service industries like transport or catering.

In politics, the people who spring to mind are elected politicians (majority men) whereas politics could be a field that chose to represent Greenham Common women, or women who campaign against Female Genital Mutilation.  But I don't see any of these in respected, traditional galleries.  So is this because they don't value women?  Their policy states they know they have an under-representation of women.  So if this is the case how do they plan to address it?  Perhaps they need to do root cause analysis of their criteria for collecting.  The descriptors in the NPG policy are implicitly masculine in my opinion, because the immediate examples of people in the public eye who spring to mind, in many of these categories, are men.


So I need to get ethics clearance before I start any research.  This means I need to work out the questions I want to ask to identify female views on values, and female views on the gendering of media and create a form, to attach to the ethics clearance.