Art world gender pay gap

June 18 2018

Image of Art world gender pay gap

Picture: Tate

There are some fairly eyebrow raising statistics in this Art Newspaper report on gender pay gaps in the art world in Britain. The focus was on auction houses:

Bonhams is the worst offender with a 36.7% pay gap, Christie’s pays women 25% less than male colleagues and the difference at Sotheby’s stands at 22.2%. These figures are based on median hourly earnings and include part-time workers (of which more are female). The median pay gap among the more than 10,000 companies that submitted figures is 9.7%.

But there were some discrepancies in the museum world too:

The Victoria and Albert Museum pays women 7.2% less, while the Royal Academy of Arts has a pay gap of just 1%. Meanwhile, at the British Museum, women out earn men by 4% and at Tate Gallery women are paid 2.4% more than their male counterparts, with 70% of its highest earners being women.

Bravo Tate!