4. Gender-Based Violence in French Art Schools and the Reproduction of Gender Inequality in Contemporary Art

Mathilde Provansal

©2025 Mathilde Provansal, CC BY-NC 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0436.04

Introduction

In September 2020, the association ‘Balancetonecoledart’ (‘expose your art school’)—created by current and former students of the Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts de Besançon (the School of Visual Arts of Besançon, a provincial French town)—published several testimonials on social media. The name of the association and the illustration accompanying the posts, a pink pig roasting on a spit on a black background, echo the #BalanceTonPorc movement (‘expose your pig’), a hashtag created in 2017 by a New York-based French journalist to raise awareness about the prevalence of sexual misconduct at work and inviting women to disclose the names of harassers. The Instagram and Facebook accounts of ‘Balancetonecoledart’ published a dozen written testimonials of sexual harassment, sexual assaults and rape. Each testimonial was accompanied by a trigger warning and the legal definition of the offence. Shortly after, the Chief Prosecutor of Besançon launched a call for testimony and students at other art schools created their own pages on social media to share experiences of violence. More recently, the testimonies that accompanied the publication of a manifesto ‘for a #Metoo of the art world’ called attention to the fact that art schools are one of the sites of gender-based violence in the contemporary art (Manifesto XXI, 2024).1

Contrary to gender-based violence in university and elite academic institutions (Ahmed, 2021; Armstrong et al., 2006; Bereni et al., 2003; Briquet, 2019; Brown et al., 2020; Cardi et al., 2005; CLASCHES, 2014; Hirsch & Khan, 2020; Schüz et al., 2022), gender-based violence in art schools remains largely under-documented. Research about gender inequality in artistic education is quite recent because for years the myth of the self-educated artist prevailed and artistic training was not considered a key step in artistic careers, except for classical music and ballet (Buscatto et al., 2020). Yet, investigating this topic may enrich our understanding of gender-based violence in higher education, and more broadly of the gender order in contemporary art. Women have constituted an increasingly large majority of visual arts students in France over the past thirty years (DEPS, 2023; Galodé, 1994). In the last two decades, more than 60% of art school students were women (DEPS, 2023). However, in 2019, only 41% of visual artists were women (DEPS, 2023), and they continue to be less visible on the contemporary art market and in institutions (Provansal, 2023). Such discrepancy between women’s presence in schools of visual arts and their professional outcomes in contemporary art is not specific to France and can be found in other countries such as Australia (The Countess, 2019), Finland (see Chapter 5 in this book), Germany (Schulz et al., 2016), Poland (Gromada et al., 2016), the United Kingdom (Robinson, 2021) and the United States (Frenette et al., 2020).

Based on the case of French schools of visual arts, this chapter explores the role that gender-based violence in artistic education plays in perpetuating gender inequality in contemporary art. Gender-based violence refers to ‘all forms of violence, whether verbal, physical or psychological, interpersonal or institutional, committed by men as men against women as women, in both public and private spheres’ (Simonetti, 2016, p. 681). Liz Kelly’s notion of the continuum of women’s experiences of sexual violence (Kelly, 1987) makes it possible to articulate various forms of violence, both verbal and physical, encompassing everything from the everyday intimate intrusions to criminalised offences. Gender-based violence is also understood as a form of social control which acts to maintain women’s subordination and limits women’s field of possibilities (Hanmer & Maynard, 1987). The notion underlines the inscription of these various forms of violence in gender relations and their role in the reproduction of gender hierarchies (Delage et al., 2019). Although violence against women is the predominant form (Brown et al., 2020), Ilaria Simonetti adds that gender-based violence also refers to the experiences of men whose masculinity does not fit the norm of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell, 2005). This chapter focuses on women’s experiences of violence, as I do not have sufficient data to study violence experienced by men and LGBTQ+ individuals. Also, I underline the articulation of gender violence with other systems of inequality when there is sufficient data to do so (Crenshaw, 1991). In this chapter, I study the forms of gender-based violence experienced by female students in public French art schools, the social processes that produce and sustain them, and their consequences for women’s integration in the contemporary art world. Overall, this chapter aims at emphasising how gender-based violence in artistic education contributes to maintaining gender segregation and thus to perpetuating gender inequality (Hattery, 2022) in the art world.

The data used for this study was collected during two different fieldworks. The first period of fieldwork is from my PhD thesis on gender inequality in contemporary art (Provansal, 2023). In particular, I conducted interviews with twenty-seven women and twenty men who graduated from a prestigious French art school, which I call ‘École des Arts Plastiques’ (EAP), between 1992 and 2014. Four artists who did not graduate from the EAP were interviewed as well. During these interviews, I asked questions about their trajectory before, during and after art school. I also interviewed six professors of the EAP. The great majority of these interviews were conducted before the #MeToo movement, from 2014 to 2018.

Gender-based violence was not a core topic of the interviews. But it was sometimes addressed by interviewees when answering questions about the atmosphere of the studio they were working in at the EAP, about their relations with their instructors and classmates, and about their experiences of instructors’ misconduct. I sometimes asked explicitly whether they had experienced or witnessed sexual harassment during their studies. However, as gender-based violence was not the core of my research, I decided not to ask for many details in order to have time to talk about their careers. It’s also worth noting that some interviewees shared their experiences and views on this topic as former students and as professors in schools of visual arts. This material, however, has some limitations. First, it was not collected to study gender-based violence in art schools. Second, I interviewed graduates who studied for at least five years in this school. Therefore, my sample does not capture individuals who may have left the school because of gender-based violence.

During this first period of fieldwork, I also did an ethnography of the first-year entrance exam of the EAP for one year out of the past ten years.5 I observed the interviews of eighty-seven candidates and the deliberations of the jury on these applications. I conducted a quantitative analysis of a database I built with the 740 applications for this exam.

The second period of fieldwork was conducted in 2021–2022. I interviewed seven female instructors working in different art schools, two members of the Ministry of Culture in charge of this question (one current, one retired), three current or former art school students involved in feminist collectives (two women, one non-binary person), and one member of CLASCHES (an anti-sexist collective fighting sexual harassment in higher education). The interviews with instructors cover various topics such as their own professional trajectory, their teaching experience in art schools, their relations with students, faculties and members of the administration, the existing measures to prevent and fight against gender-based violence and to support victims, their role in the implementation of this policy and the consequences that public disclosure of gender-based violence in their school have had on their working conditions. In addition, I analysed documents written by Les Mots de Trop and a guide on ‘sexist and sexual violence’ produced by a collective of feminist art school instructors (La collective d’enseignantes & H·Alix Sanyas, 2023).

In the first section of this chapter, I describe the different forms of gender-based violence experienced by women during their studies in art schools. In the second section, I explore the social processes and relations that enable gender-based violence in the arts and that contribute to obscuring it. The third section addresses the consequences of gender-based violence on women’s professionalisation in art schools.

The Various Forms of Gender-Based Violence Experienced by Women in Art School

The majority of gender-based violence reported in interviews by graduates of the EAP and in the testimonies collected by Les Mots de Trop was exerted by male instructors against female students.

A large number of female and male respondents reported various forms of everyday sexism and misogyny:

Sexist remarks, jokes you hear all the time. Basically, you have to, especially in sculpture because it’s physical and it’s a real commitment of the body, so you hear that you can’t hold on very long or that such and such an artist is very ballsy, yeah, you get lots of remarks like that, you still get lots of representations like that.6 (Interview with a twenty-eight-year-old woman)

Sexist remarks and jokes are made about female students’ work on intimacy, body, femininity, sexuality or when using techniques and media socially constructed as ‘feminine’. Several female students were also told by professors that women would stop their artistic practice shortly after graduation because they would get married or have children. During the evaluation of her artistic work to validate her diploma, a predominantly masculine jury made comments about a pregnant student. She did not receive her diploma and wondered afterwards whether the jury had taken her work less seriously because she was pregnant. One female professor also reported a case where sexism was articulated with ableism. Some male professors refused a deaf student the equal treatment she was asking for and made sexist comments about her:

Experiences of sexism represent a great majority of testimonies collected by Les Mots de Trop. Around 40% of the testimonies detail experiences of misogyny and sexism, and male instructors are involved in half of these cases (Les Mots de Trop, 2021).

Several female graduates of the EAP reported various forms of unwanted sexual attention as well. It mainly consisted of male instructors staring or leering at female students. For example, the twenty-eight-year-old woman quoted above said: ‘oh well, looking at your breasts, yes, that happens very often during interviews’. Another thirty-three-year-old woman criticised ‘the male gaze at the female model’:

It’s a question of a man of a certain age, who’s in a position of power, who’s going to look at a young girl who’s, we’re not even talking about physical attraction because attraction isn’t the word, there’s really no point in saying it, but who’s reduced to her body of a twenty-year-old woman.

Unwanted sexual attention can take the form of unwanted physical contact to establish a sexualised relationship with a student. For example, a thirty-year-old-woman said that her studio head put his hands on her hips while she was working. She did not understand what was happening and felt very uncomfortable. Some male instructors commented on women’s appearance or clothes as well. Some instructors’ behaviours were also reported by female students as ambiguous and ‘insidious’, and they did not know whether to qualify it as a form of sexual attention or not. For example, a professor asked a former female student to see her work in her very tiny apartment. She did not understand why he would not look at her work at school and felt very uncomfortable. She tried to keep physical distance and to appear very cold during this meeting. According to her, it would have been easy to have sex with him but she did not want to. Sometimes, these forms of unwanted sexual attention are hidden behind artistic matters as, for example, when a male professor suggests a female student to be naked for a performance or a photography project.

None of the graduates labelled these experiences as sexual harassment or abuse. However, one former female graduate and several female instructors mentioned cases of ‘abuse’, ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘rape’ at the EAP. One thirty-seven-year-old woman reported that a professor tried ‘to abuse’ a foreign student within the school. Interviews with female professors revealed that two students filed a sexual harassment complaint against a professor. They both had to withdraw the complaint under pressure from the school.7 According to one instructor, one student was raped by a male instructor who had sexual relations with many students.8 Female instructors working in other art schools reported various forms of everyday sexism as well as cases of sexual harassment and rape mainly committed by male instructors with female students (see also Chapter 5 in this book).

Gender-Based Violence among Students Is More Difficult to Identify

The interviews I conducted with the graduates of the EAP also contain accounts of gender-based violence exerted by male students against female students. However, it seems easier for students and graduates to identify and disclose gender-based violence when it is committed in a relation characterised by hierarchy, an asymmetrical distribution of power and age difference. For example, gender-based violence disclosed on the Facebook and Instagram accounts of ‘Balancetonecoledart’ Besançon and Marseille do not contain testimonials of gender-based violence among students.9 Likewise, among the 432 testimonies received by Les Mots de Trop, 225 involved male instructors and only 13 involved students (Les Mots de Trop, 2022, p. 29). A former female student I interviewed during the second period of fieldwork talked easily about her experiences of sexual harassment and sexual aggression committed by male instructors, but she did not want to answer any questions about physical violence committed by her boyfriend who was a student as well. The interviews with the female and male graduates of the EAP contain more examples of the various forms of gender-based violence exerted by male instructors toward women than examples of gender-based violence committed between students. The great majority are also described by female graduates. They reported sexist remarks and sexist jokes made by some of their classmates, negative comments and remarks about their work, experiences of unwanted physical contact and unwanted sexual attention. These forms of violence were usually mentioned when I asked questions about how the graduates found a studio or about its organisation and atmosphere:

No woman reported any case of sexual abuse or rape, but one woman experienced physical, verbal and psychological violence committed by her partner, who was a student in the school as well. One possible explanation of the fact that instances of gender-based violence exerted by male students on female students are more difficult to identify and to condemn by the victims and their classmates than the ones exerted by male instructors towards students is that the latter take place in unequal power relations clearly identified by students. On the contrary, the seemingly shared experience of being an art school student might obscure the structural character of gender-based violence among students (Brook et al., 2020) and its inscription in unequal gender relations.10

Before exploring the consequences of this continuum of gender-based violence on women’s professionalisation, the next section identifies some social processes and relations that constitute the scaffolding of gender-based violence in art schools.

Social Processes and Relations Sustaining Gender-Based Violence in Art Schools

Several mechanisms produce gendered power structures that enable and sustain gender-based violence in art schools, and that might contribute to silencing victims.

A first social process providing a ‘conducive context’ (Kelly, 2016) for gender-based violence is the sexualisation of female students in a context of ‘hierarchised gender diversity’ (Cardi et al., 2005). The last expression refers to the unequal distribution of power and authority between men and women within art schools, and in particular at the École des Arts Plastiques. While women now comprise two thirds of art school students, faculty—especially in artistic practices—have long been overwhelmingly male (Vandenbunder, 2014). For example, in 2015, women represented less than a third of the instructors of the EAP, and, in particular, three quarters of studio heads were men. The sexualisation of female students contributes to the trivialisation of sexual interactions between male professors and female students and obscures the relations of power and authority between them.

First, instructors and gatekeepers may use women’s physical appearance to evaluate and select female artists at different stages of their career (Provansal, 2024; see also Buscatto et al.; Chujo; Lechaux, in this book). As I have shown elsewhere (Provansal, 2023, 2024), the sexualisation of female candidates happens right from the beginning of artistic education, as mentioned by a male graduate of the EAP:

The girls who enter the school are very, very pretty. I mean, there really are a lot of them. And it’s not something you can count scientifically, but if you’re honest with yourself, it’s there, you know. I’ve already heard teachers in the corridors after first-year juries saying that this year we’ve gone a bit too far, that we’ve taken too many girls for their looks. Well no, maybe it didn’t mean that, but maybe they found their work interesting, maybe it didn’t mean that. But what it did mean was that at the end of the day, uh, on the first-year class photo, it’s going to look weird, and they said so themselves, so there’s something odd about it. Do you see what I mean?

The ‘hierarchised gender diversity’ of the jury (twenty men versus four women the year I conducted my observation) and the high uncertainty of the artistic quality of the candidates open the door to the sexualisation of female candidates. In other art worlds where women are a majority, such as theatre (Moeschler & Rolle, 2014) or dance (Sorignet, 2010), women’s academic degrees and artistic experience matter in their selection. But for women, these resources are less important for entering the EAP than their ‘personality’. More than a third of the observed female candidates got selected for their ‘personality’ while it was the case for only one out of the nineteen admitted observed male candidates. In particular, the physical appearance of female candidates was often brought up during the deliberation even though it is not a professional resource in the visual arts. For some female candidates, their look and appearance were the only elements discussed during the deliberation.

Once admitted to the EAP, seduction is considered to be part of the game and former students of the EAP compare, for example, the search for a studio to speed dating. However, the process does not entail male students’ sexualisation. According to female and male interviewees, women’s physical appearance is used by some studio professors to select female students. A thirty-two-year-old woman said about her studio head:

There’s obviously a cast like that, because all the chicks who were in my studio were very pretty, and even today, if you go to the EAP, it’s, well, it’s visible. (Interview with a forty-five-year old woman)

Interviews with female instructors working in other art schools reveal that using physical appearance to evaluate and select female artists is not restricted to the EAP. A female instructor, for example, mentioned that faculties used to ‘rate [female] students’ asses in exams from one to ten’.

Second, according to the interviewees, romantic and sexual relationships between instructors and students at the EAP were not uncommon during their studies. They are trivialised by some respondents who consider them to be common at university. The EAP would thus be like any other higher education institution. These relations are all the more tolerated as they are attributed to the openness and transgressive character of artistic circles. Some respondents emphasise that female students are no longer minors and are thus old enough to consent or not.11 According to many interviewees, the issue of gender-based violence in art schools is a complex one because there can be ‘true love stories’, too:

But afterwards, you hear stories but you have to take a step back because it’s complex, these stories of, it’s really complicated. There are also love stories, there are also attractions, that’s what you can’t do, it’s difficult to do, there’s no question of judging, but these stories are complicated. I mean, on principle, it’s not great that teachers sleep with their students. (Interview with a forty-one-year old woman)

Several women underline that they became aware of the relations of power and authority behind these sexualised interactions once they became instructors in art schools themselves.

Third, in art schools, relations between instructors and students are strongly personalised and individualised, which works to reinforce and to normalise the sexualisation of female students and to obscure the dimensions of power in these relations. It also has the effect of blurring the boundary between the private and educational spheres (see below).

Finally, the naturalisation of men’s flirting behaviours and men’s sexual urges serves to obscure the hierarchical dimension of the relation and the structural character of gender-based violence. These behaviours are attributed to the ‘temperament’ of male professors and to the ‘personality’ of female students, in particular to their lack of ‘character’ and weakness. This form of victim blaming puts female students in charge of setting limits and saying no to sexual interactions with their professor. For example, in the following excerpt, a thirty-seven-year-old woman witnessed what she calls the ‘abuse’ of a female student. Her essentialist explanation of sexual violence is enhanced by harmful stereotypes and racialised gendered myths about Asian women:

This girl, she was Japanese or Chinese, I mean Asian. So already she was lacking in language skills. Often, in fact, these women artists […] they have a completely different culture of attitude, a little self-effacing, a bit submissive in the face of men, in the face of authority, in the face of the prestige of this school, too. In their attitude one often feels a rather strong weakness of presence […] So they are perfect victims. […] I say that some personalities are more fragile than others and that in fact when there are structures like that, which are very sexist, very macho, well these women (she whistles), it’s complicated.

A second mechanism perpetuating gender-based violence is linked to the organisation of the artistic work of art school students. In art schools as well as in the contemporary art world, there is an oversupply of would-be artists and thus strong competition for access to professional networks and visibility. Like models in the fashion industry (Crowley, 2021), students are placed in a situation of ‘asymmetric information’ and rely on their instructors to learn the ‘rules of art’ (Provansal, 2023). They are taught in an informal way, for example via studio heads’ personal anecdotes shared with a limited number of students. This works to place students in a dependent position and to make it more difficult for them to denounce experiences of gender-based violence (see also Chapter 5 in this book). This dependent position is even more precarious and vulnerable for female students when they are expected to play the seduction card to obtain the support of a mentor:

He [a studio head] had a weird relationship with young girls, you know. He’d been going out with one of his former students for a very long time, his favorite of the studio was a girl who posed naked on her sculptures […] who did things with honey, a mattress, and very sensual stuff, and he’d suggest ‘ah well it would be nice if you did that, that performance but naked, it would be more interesting’ […] So I ran away. […] He had his favorites, who were always the pretty girls, and he helped them out a lot when they left school. There was a very clear seduction relationship. (Interview with a twenty-eight-year-old woman)

The blurred boundaries between the private, educational and professional spheres is a third mechanism producing a conducive context for gender-based violence in schools of visual arts (see also Chapter 5 in this book), and in other cultural and artistic fields such as the screen industries (Chapter 6, this book) and the theatre (Chapter 7, this book). Several students interpret the professional expectation to develop a personal artistic vision as an injunction to expose themselves. For example, some students work with their own intimate experience in their artworks, especially in their first years of artistic education. However, it can put them in a vulnerable position when they share their intimacy with their professors. For example, Les Mots de Trop (2021) writes:

At least in France, art schools are perceived as places where you have to focus work on personal feelings, stories, experiences—thereby being exposed to a certain kind of vulnerability.

Some female instructors and students explained how this expectation can be manipulated by male instructors to sexualise female students, suggesting that they be nude in their work and likening it to a way of exposing oneself or transgressing boundaries. Similarly, Bleuwenn Lechaux (Chapter 7) depicts how emotions and intimacy permeate professional theatre practices and make it more difficult to denounce sexual harassment.

Students might also share friendly and intimate moments with their professors during school trips, artist residencies, student parties and other moments of sociability within or outside the school. A French female instructor described her shock when she took her first teaching position in a French art school after spending the first part of her career abroad:

And then (laughs), it’s (laughs), it’s the great, the great revelation of art schools in France, that I don’t know of course, uh because in my first year if you want I arrive and uh I’m confronted with something that completely stuns me that is uh teachers who throw parties to celebrate students’ diplomas by inviting strippers.

The sexual harassment and rapes described in the testimonies of female instructors or collected by ‘Balancetonecoledart’ and involving students and male instructors or members of the administration took place in contexts like parties or school trips where the boundaries between the private, educational and professional spheres were blurred (see also Chapter 5). As mentioned before, this helps to obscure the relation of power between male professors and female students.

The Flawed Implementation of Policies against Gender-Based Violence in Artistic Higher Education

For many years, there was a lack of human resources, infrastructures and measures to prevent and to fight gender-based violence in art schools but also to support victims socially, psychologically and legally. This worked to silence and to sustain gender-based violence. The lack of legal or professional sanctions, the fact that some schools put pressure on students to drop complaints and the lack of support by the administration and other instructors for students and professors who reported cases of violence do not encourage women to disclose gender-based violence and to file a complaint.

Since 2017, some measures to regulate sexist and sexual violence have been implemented in art schools: charters for equality and diversity, mandatory training on sexist and sexual violence, committees for equality and diversity, the possibility to contact ‘Allosexism’, a listening unit opened by the Ministry of Culture to report and find support for gender-based violence in the arts. However, access to and the implementation of these measures vary depending on the status of the school (national versus local), some measures remain unknown, such as ‘Allosexism’, and some have limitations due to a lack of clear procedures. For example, students are sometimes part of equality committees and might find it difficult to hear testimonials about sexual violence, some instructors have leaked what they have heard to protect colleagues, members of these committees are not necessarily trained to handle issues about sexist and sexual violence, and there are no clear procedures on how to handle cases of reported violence. One female instructor, for example, regretted the lack of guidance, training and human resources needed to define and implement such measures:

According to the interviewed female instructors in charge of defining and implementing measures to regulate sexist and sexual violence, the lack of a ‘clear path’ limits the effect of these new policies. Furthermore, the absence of support and the sometimes strong resistance from some of their colleagues or members of the administration hindered the implementation of gender-based violence policies.

In reaction to the lack of information and measures to prevent and fight gender-based violence in art schools, feminist collectives formed by students or instructors created their own tools (booklets, websites, etc.) such as the self-defense guide for art students by Les Mots de Trop (2022) or the guide to fighting against sexist and sexual violence in art schools written by female instructors (La collective d’enseignantes & H·Alix Sanyas, 2023).

The range of verbal and physical violence experienced by female students in art schools is not without consequences on their professionalisation. In particular, it constrains women’s field of possibilities in terms of artistic practice, professional networks and work opportunities.

Women’s Workspace Instability

A first consequence of this range of verbal and physical violence exerted by both professors and students is the instability of a place to work for female students. At the EAP, several women decided to change studios, sometimes several times during their studies, because of the control exerted by male students on the workspace, or to escape a sexist, macho and misogynistic atmosphere, or because they did not feel comfortable with the inappropriate relationships between their studio head and female students, or because they wanted to work with a professor who would support their work. A thirty-three-year-old woman, for example, explained how ‘a group of extremely confident guys, five or six of them’ controlled women’s access to studios of artistic practice:

Little macho guys who were insufferable, unbearable, and leering, too. And I know that a lot of girls didn’t go to those studios because they were afraid of those guys. Like the studio downstairs, there was a kind of an old painter who had a crew like that of guys who were there like zombies, who’d been there for years at the EAP, you even got the feeling they were part of the walls, who laid down the law a bit, who took the biggest wall.

The instability of the workspace constrains women’s professionalisation. It hinders women’s access to professional networks, as well as to the professional norms and representations that organise artistic work (Provansal, 2023). For example, a woman described herself as an ‘artist without a fixed studio’, and she regretted that she ‘never managed to find a kind of mentor’ to support her, who could transmit to her ‘the rules of art’ which are not part of the official curriculum. According to two female instructors, two female students who had been raped by a male instructor at the EAP or by a student in another school, had to temporarily quit artistic education in order to receive various forms of support to be able to continue their studies.

Women’s workspace instability makes it more difficult for them to develop their creative abilities (Provansal, 2023). Some students end up working in a studio that does not fit their artistic practices. They are not supported by their studio head or they do not have access to adequate materials and tools.

As I have shown elsewhere (Provansal, 2024), women’s sexualisation threatens their recognition as potential artists. It raises doubts about their success and obscures their artistic skills. For example, according to many graduates, if women are a majority at the EAP and in some studios of the school, it is because there are some ‘pretty girl quotas’. The fact that some women are selected based on appearance affects how all women are perceived in the school. This expression delegitimises women’s presence in the school. Women are not perceived as potential and legitimate colleagues, and since their artistic skills are not taken into consideration, they are less likely to be invited to collective exhibitions or to be supported by their instructors. A female instructor who used to teach in a preparatory program detailed the same mechanism at work in another school:

I ended up blacklisting a school that I knew only took pretty girls, because I don’t think that benefits anyone.12 It doesn’t benefit the pretty ones or the ugly ones. The ugly ones are eliminated from the competition. They don’t get in. And the pretty ones get in, and during all their education they’re under the suspicion that they got in because they’re pretty, not because they’re smart or brilliant.

The various forms of unwanted sexual attention limit women’s possibilities to develop a singular artistic practice and a ‘creative vision’ (Wohl, 2021). For example, a twenty-eight-year-old graduate of the EAP explained how sexism and women’s sexualisation constrained her artistic work on sexuality:

I would have never seen myself discussing this with a teacher who has a seductive relationship with his female students, and who is very patriarchal in the way he operates, even paternalistic at times. When someone makes comments likes that, you’re not going to develop themes, well I would not have felt at all comfortable being free about it.

Likewise, Anna Bull (in Chapter 6 of this book) shows how experiences of sexual harassment may hinder the creative freedom of women working on content related to sexuality in the UK screen industries. Some female instructors underlined how important it is to have more women so as to bring another perspective on female students’ work on issues related to the body and sexuality:

I warned the female students in general from the very first class. And it was a bit shocking for them. I’d say to them, it’s possible that at some point some of you will want to do nude performances. But think carefully, because the way you see yourself in relation to your body during the performance and the way an outsider’s gaze—and I mean a very male gaze, because my team was very masculine—receives these images is not at all the same thing. And you don’t yet have the codes because you’re very young. I think they were a little offended by what I was saying, but I think it was important because this nudity thing is perhaps a little less frequent in portfolios today, but ten years ago it was crazy. In other words, after a month of preparatory program, all my students were naked. And there are teachers behind this, too. There are teachers who recommend it.

Oh yes, who encouraged it, who said that’s how you get into a school, that’s how you really expose yourself. It’s total manipulation.

Women’s sexualisation affects their interactions with instructors and invited gatekeepers in the school. As mentioned before, they are expected to be responsible for containing men’s sexuality and they have to manage the trouble of unwanted sexual attention. Like women opera singers and Japanese musicians (see Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 in this book), female students are caught between ‘allowing seduction’, with the risk of threatening the legitimacy of their reputation, and ‘avoiding seduction’, with the risk of losing some relational resources and being marginalised (Buscatto, 2021). It makes it more difficult to have strong and lasting relations with their instructors. By maintaining distance from their professors, they might miss professional opportunities and relational resources, and they are not part of the few students with whom professors informally share the rules of art.

Finally, sexist prejudices have an effect on women’s access to professional opportunities. For example, women have long been excluded from student jobs at the EAP because they were considered to be physically weaker than men. Yet, several respondents, men and women, noticed that most of the tasks did not require physical strength. These jobs provide opportunities to become familiar with the professional conventions of the contemporary art world and to build professional networks. The devaluation of ‘feminine’ artistic practices limits the possibilities of artistic creation. Stereotypes related to motherhood also threaten the recognition of women’s commitment to artistic careers and limit the support they can receive from professors. Assigning women to motherhood is a way to limit the professional future of female students.

While most studies mainly focus on the effects that gender-based violence has on working women (McLaughlin et al., 2017), in this chapter I have studied the effects of gender-based violence on women’s careers with a focus on artistic education, which is a first step in distinguishing between amateurs and professionals. This case study reveals that gender-based violence does not disappear in contexts where women are a majority. As in other art fields such as opera or theatre (see Chapter 2 and Chapter 7 in this book), the various forms of gender-based violence experienced by female art students are part of routinised work practices and shared representations in art schools, which work to obscure and silence them.

Gender-based violence is both an expression of gendered inequalities in the art world and one of the social processes perpetuating them. First, gender-based violence limits women’s field of possibilities in terms of artistic practice. Second, it hinders female students’ professionalisation by restricting their access to the professional norms and networks of the contemporary art world. Without unhindered access to the rules of art and professional networks, some women ultimately experience less control over their artistic careers.

Finally, even if it was not the focus of this chapter, one should note that the commitment of some women to preventing and fighting gender-based violence in art schools has an impact on their own artistic careers when they are subjected to moral harassment by an aggressor, when they do not have time left for their artistic work, or when they have to cope with the mental burden imposed by this form of academic care.

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