In traditional Art history, female artists haven’t had much chance to practice art or to acquire art education, as male artists tended to dominate the traditional art world. The bias on female is still exist nowadays.
According to feminist aesthetics, approaches to art by women are fundamentally different than those by men in a way that gender-biased roles for women such as knitting and quilting are stressed. Despite this gender bias, routinely practicing those activities can actually enrich women’s life in family as well as enhancing their crafting skills. Acquiring these skills therefore does not precisely infer that the inner potential of men and women are inherently and inevitably different. These approaches partially reflect social and gender bias and different expectations on each gender.
Different social expectations are implied by the difference of the life of Pablo Picasso and that of Emily Carr who were born at almost the same period. However, Emily obviously had more struggles in her life as an unmarried women and had less fame. Being a single lady was not easy at Emily’s time, yet Picasso’s wild life was relatively uncontentious. Due to absence of social and family pressure, men tend to succeed easily.
As Art educators, we should start to question many of the assumptions and beliefs that had taken for granted, and to design a gender-equal art curriculum for students.
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