Women out-numbered men in the sample group 349 to 242. This is a much higher proportion of women than in either the general population or the Indigenous population for the survey region, where women outnumbered men 81,613 to 73,863 according to the 2006 ABS Census. Women do regularly outnumber men in the Indigenous arts industry – according to Altman et al The Aboriginal Arts and Crafts Industry (1989), women were 56% of the artist group in remote Aboriginal communities, and this gender imbalance is also reflected in the non-Indigenous visual arts sector[1]. Interestingly, in the Storylines sample, men in their 30s actually outnumbered women in their 30s. By their 40s however, women outstripped men both in absolute numbers and – though less dramatically – in the percentages of male and female artists in particular age brackets.
Figure 2.1 Ages of Storylines artists bracketed into ABS age categories
[1] David Throsby and Beverley Thompson, But what do you do for a living?: A New Economic Survey of Australian Artists ( Strawberry Hills, NSW: Australia Council, 1994), 10. See also Media for a discussion of how the reclassification of media in which women predominate (like e.g. weaving) from “craft” to “art” has affected these figures.