Promoting gender equality in museums in France

Promoting equality in all cultural sectors: a necessity

The Ministry of Culture is actively involved in promoting equality between women and men. A roadmap The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Culture, Culture, Culture and Culture has developed over the years and now covers many cultural sectors. It is a testament to the progress made on gender equality and the work that remains to be done in all areas – performing arts, visual arts, music, video games, media, libraries, heritage and architecture.

Working Group Methodology

In view of the still severe findings of the successive editions of theMonitoring equality between women and men in culture and communication since 2013, the mobilization of all must undergo new developments. To accelerate this dynamic, the French Museum Service and the ministry’s “Corporate Social Responsibility” mission have brought together, with the support of the association Aware, about fifteen museums in France that are resolutely committed to equality issues in order to think about concrete tools to ensure a better presence of women in the heritage field. The question covers all disciplines, beyond the prism of fine arts, and is not limited to the number of women artists present in the collection. She questions what heritage objects reveal about women’s place in history and in representations. The working sessions addressed the issue from the perspective of permanent collections, cultural programming, public relations and human resources.

An incentive and non-binding logic

This summary sheet aims to present the group’s work in the form of questions, in an incentive and non-binding logic. The realization of a diagnosis is a prerequisite: how is the supervision of the institution positioned? Are there other actors involved in the territory? What is the state of play for the collection, programming, research? What are the capabilities of databases? How else can we make women visible (videos, archives, books, etc.) to compensate for an insufficient presence in collections?

A toolkit for all museum professionals

Museum professionals are invited to draw freely from this toolkit, according to their scientific and cultural project, the nature of their collections, the size of their institutions and the means available. The question of equality is an expectation and a hope of the teams and the public: answering it is a way for museums in France to be innovative and a way to encourage others to think and act in the spirit of the general interest.

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