By choosing to become artist-entrepreneurs, we are fully aware that the path will be fraught with obstacles and major challenges. For these reasons, this career choice requires more than most occupations do: deep reflection on our profound desire to pursue this path, given the financial insecurity, time investment, highly precarious working conditions, often solitary work, need for transferable skills, high mental load, heavy workload, etc.
Once all these aspects have been taken into consideration, we also overlook a crucial factor that will accompany us throughout our careers: the gender imbalance is still omnipresent.
After more than five years of expanding our work in the craft and entrepreneurship sectors, we realize every week how deeply rooted biases and certain prejudices still are, even though the vast majority are women (two-thirds of CMAQ members are women entrepreneurs established in regional areas). Taking an intersectional approach, we see that our plural identities often work against us. By this, we mean being a woman/artist/entrepreneur/practitioner of a feminine, domestic craft (quilting). To these multiple identities, some may also add being a mother, being from a diverse background, living with a disability, etc.Â
The inequalities we experience are often insidious and can take many forms: lack of self-confidence, artistic practices that receive less recognition and appreciation (e.g., textile art), financial insecurity during motherhood, a frequently greater domestic workload at home (adding to the work schedule), underrepresentation of women artists in galleries and museums, etc.
Let’s say that, with equal skill and determination, it is clear that artist-entrepreneurs start out at a disadvantage when it comes to equal opportunities.
We are not writing this message today to feel sorry for ourselves—far from it. We are writing this message as a collective and individual wake-up call. It is by navigating this context that we are proud to still be standing (5 years later), at the head of a company made up entirely of women. We are also writing because we want to be part of the public conversation, which requires the art and craft sector (professionals and institutions) to continue its efforts toward equal representation of artists. We are writing so that funders and financial institutions take these gender intersectionality issues into account. We are speaking out so that the organizations behind artists’ markets and fairs also apply this lens to their event planning.
Despite everything, what we take away above all from the ecosystem of women artists we interact with is that it is tremendously supportive, collaborative, skilled, creative, committed, aware, and determined. To conclude, here are a few artist-entrepreneurs doing exceptional work that fully deserves to be highlighted:
