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1. Introduction: A Comprehensive Understanding of Gender-Based Violence in Artistic and Cultural Worlds

  • Marie Buscatto (author)
  • Sari Karttunen(author)
  • Mathilde Provansal (author)
Chapter of: Gender-Based Violence in Arts and Culture: Perspectives on Education and Work(pp. 1–24)
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Title1. Introduction
SubtitleA Comprehensive Understanding of Gender-Based Violence in Artistic and Cultural Worlds
ContributorMarie Buscatto (author)
Sari Karttunen(author)
Mathilde Provansal (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0436.01
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0436/chapters/10.11647/obp.0436.01
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightMarie Buscatto; Sari Karttunen; Mathilde Provansal;
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2025-06-23
Long abstract

In October 2017, dozens of women made accusations of sexual violence against the cinema producer Harvey Weinstein. Shortly after, upon the invitation of Alyssa Milano, thousands of women shared their experiences of gender-based violence on social media under the hashtag #MeToo, using the name of the movement against sexual violence experienced by women of colour founded by the African American activist Tarana Burke. In many locations all over the world, the past eight years have been marked by numerous denunciations of cases of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape, mainly committed by men against women, in a large range of artistic and cultural work and education contexts. Gender-based violence affects all kinds of artistic and cultural workplaces and educational institutions across many countries, which suggests that they are neither isolated incidents nor the consequences of a few individual deviant men. Instead, it reveals the systemic character of gender-based violence in artistic and cultural worlds. However, while gender inequalities in art worlds are well documented by academic research, the identification and explanation of gender-based violence in artistic and cultural sectors remain underexplored. Based on ambitious case studies in several art and cultural domains—opera, popular and electronic music, visual arts, screen industries, photography, and theatre—and across a wide range of countries—Finland, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—this book aims to fill this gap. In this introductory chapter, we first examine the current state of the art in the analysis of gender inequalities and gender-based violence in artistic and cultural worlds before presenting the key contributions of this book to a comprehensive understanding of gender-based violence in artistic and cultural work and education.

Page rangepp. 1–24
Print length24 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Locations
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PDFhttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0436/chapters/10.11647/obp.0436.01Landing pagehttps://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0436.01.pdfFull text URL
HTMLhttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0436/chapters/10.11647/obp.0436.01Landing pagehttps://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0436/ch1.xhtmlFull text URLPublisher Website
Contributors

Marie Buscatto

(author)
Full Professor of Sociology at Pantheon-Sorbonne University
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marie-Buscatto

Marie Buscatto is a Full Professor of Sociology at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a researcher at IDHE.S (Paris 1—CNRS). She is a sociologist of work, gender and the arts, and a specialist in qualitative methods. Her current work focuses on gender inequalities in art worlds and prestigious professions, gender-based violence in the arts and the paradoxes of artistic work in Europe, North America and Japan. Her most recent publications in English include Women in Jazz. Musicality, Femininity, Marginalization (Routledge, 2021) and ‘Getting Old in Art. Revisiting the Trajectories of ‘Modest’ Artists’ (Recherches sociologiques et anthropologiques, 2019). To find out more about her (more than) 160 publications, go to https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marie-Buscatto

Sari Karttunen

(author)
Senior Researcher at Center for Cultural Policy Research
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7248-4671

Sari Karttunen, DSoc Sc, is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Cultural

Policy Research CUPORE in Helsinki. She is also a Visiting Researcher

at the University of the Arts Helsinki and holds the title of Adjunct

Professor in cultural policy at the University of Jyväskylä. Her expertise

lies in the sociology of artistic occupations and the analysis and critique

of cultural statistics and other knowledge bases used in cultural policy.

Currently, her research interests focus on diversity issues within cultural

policy. Sari is an active member of the Research Network on Sociology

of the Arts of the European Sociological Association, having served as

co-coordinator from 2017 to 2019 and coordinator from 2019 to 2021.

Mathilde Provansal

(author)
Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
https://www.gender.soziologie.uni-muenchen.de/personen/wissenschaftlich_mitarbeiter/provansal/index.html

Mathilde Provansal is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of

Sociology of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany).

Her research concerns gender inequality and gender-based violence in

art schools and contemporary art. She published the monograph Artistes

mais femmes. Une enquête sociologique dans l’art contemporain (ENS Éditions,

2023), based on her dissertation on gender inequality in contemporary

art, which was awarded two prizes: the Valois prize 2020 from the French

Ministry of Culture, and the Louis Gruel prize from the Observatoire

National de la Vie Étudiante (National Student Life Observatory). She

has also published several articles, including ‘Precarious Professional

Identities. Women Artists and Gender Inequality within Contemporary

Art’ (L’Année Sociologique, 2024).

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