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Women arts and culture workers

2021 data, pandemic-related changes, and long-term trends

Hill Strategies (Kelly Hill)

Jun 15, 2022

This post investigates a number of equity issues related to women arts and culture workers, including their share of the workforce, their share of hours worked, as well as recent and longer-term trends in these key statistics.

Key questions
Do women get paid for as many hours of arts and culture work as men?
Are there more women or men in the arts and culture workforce? Has that shifted over time?

There are some important things to keep in mind regarding strengths and limitations of the Labour Force Survey (LFS):

Until very recently, the LFS captured information related only to women and men, not people with diverse gender identities. Because of this limitation, this post only includes information on women and men.
This is a very “big picture” view. The definition of arts and culture workers includes 50 occupation groups, including heritage occupations (e.g., librarians, museum workers, archivists), cultural occupations (e.g., designers, editors, architects), and artists (i.e., performing arts creators and interpreters, visual artists, artisans, craftspeople, and writers). See this pdf file for details.
The LFS information is available only for the full group of 50 occupations, plus a subset of nine occupations (artists), not for other subsets or individual occupations. We cannot use this data request to understand differences in trends between workers in the arts, heritage, and cultural industries.
Hours worked provides one of the best indicators of changes over time, especially in a sector where self-employment is common. (Many self-employed people lose gigs – i.e., hours worked – when times are tough but may not technically lose their job.) 65% of artists and 28% of arts and culture workers are self-employed.
Income comparisons are not provided in this post. Because the LFS questionnaire captures salaries only (not self-employment earnings), and because of the high proportion of self-employed arts and culture workers, I did not ask for income data in my LFS request.

Yesterday’s unlocked post on longer-term trends for all artists and arts and culture workers contained many more details about using the LFS to measure the arts and culture workforce.

I’ve recently written about the situation of women artists. In this post, I’ll focus on the broader occupation grouping of arts and culture workers.

Key findings
Average hours worked per week: 13% lower for women arts and culture workers than men.
Women: 12.7 million hours of work
50% of hours worked in the arts and culture workers in 2021 (was just 38% in 1997)
436,000 women arts and culture workers
53% of arts and culture workers in 2021 (was just 43% in 1997)

Women arts and culture workers in 2021 and long-term trends

In 2021, the 436,000 women arts and culture workers logged 12.7 million hours of work. Women accounted for 53% of arts and culture workers in 2021, which is a significant increase from 43% in 1997 (when 228,000 women worked in an arts and culture occupation). Women’s share of all arts and culture positions (53%) is much higher than the average in the overall labour force (47%).

Graph of the percentage of arts and culture workers who are women and men, 1997 to 2021. In 1997, just 43% of arts and culture workers were women. This increased regularly throughout the 25-year timeframe. In 2021, 53% of arts and culture workers were women.

Note: The 2021 census, with its larger sample size, will provide a more definitive estimate of women arts and culture workers, but the LFS estimate is particularly useful for historical comparisons.

The total hours worked by women in arts and culture occupations in 2021 (12.7 million) is close to double their hours worked in 1997 (6.7 million).

Women accounted for one-half of the hours worked by all arts and culture workers in 2021. This proportion has risen steadily from just 38% in 1997. Women’s share of hours worked in the arts and culture (50%) is much higher than the average in the overall labour force (43%).

Still, women do not receive their full share of hours worked in the arts and culture: the average hours worked per week by women (29.0 hours at their main job) is 13% lower than the average for men (33.4). Women’s share of hours worked (50%) is lower than their proportion of arts and culture workers (53%). This LFS data request cannot provide insights into the reasons behind the lower share of hours worked by women arts and culture workers. It is possible that: more women work part-time hours (whether by choice or not); more women hold multiple jobs and work fewer hours at their main position; there is an uneven gender distribution in senior artistic roles that require more hours worked; and women with children bear more childcare responsibilities than men and are unable to work as many hours.

Table of Arts and culture workers in 2021 and comparisons with all workers based on the Labour Force Survey. Women arts and culture workers. Number of workers: 436,000. Total hours worked: 12.7 million. Average hours worked per week: 29. Men arts and culture workers. Number of workers: 385,000. Total hours worked: 12.8 million. Average hours worked per week: 33.4. All women workers. Number of workers: 8.9 million. Total hours worked: 260 million. Average hours worked per week: 29.1. All men workers. Number of workers: 9.9 million. Total hours worked: 348 million. Average hours worked per week: 35. Source: Hill Strategies analysis of custom data commissioned from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey.

Pandemic-related changes

Between 2019 and 2021, the hours worked by women arts and culture workers increased by 12%. After a relatively small 3% decrease in 2020, hours worked by women arts and culture workers increased by 15% in 2021.

In comparison, the hours worked by men arts and culture workers increased by just 2% between 2019 and 2021. Men had a stronger reduction in hours worked in 2020 (-11%) and had the same percentage increase as women in 2021 (15%).

However, as noted above, the average hours worked per week in 2021 remained lower for women than men who work in the arts and culture (29.0 vs 33.4 hours, a 13% difference).

The changes in hours worked by all groups of arts and culture workers are higher than the equivalent changes for all workers during the pandemic.

Of note, pandemic-related changes for women artists were particularly challenging: a 5% decrease in hours worked between 2019 and 2021.

Table of Changes in hours worked for different groups of workers between 2019 and 2021. Annual averages from the Labour Force Survey. Women arts and culture workers. 2019 to 2020: -3%. 2020 to 2021: 15%. Overall: 2019 to 2021: 12%. Men arts and culture workers. 2019 to 2020: -11%. 2020 to 2021: 15%. Overall: 2019 to 2021: 12%. All arts and culture workers. 2019 to 2020: -7%. 2020 to 2021: 15%. Overall: 2019 to 2021: 7%. All women in the labour force. 2019 to 2020: -10%. 2020 to 2021: 11%. Overall: 2019 to 2021: 0%. All men in the labour force. 2019 to 2020: -8%. 2020 to 2021: 8%. Overall: 2019 to 2021: -1%. All workers. 2019 to 2020: -9%. 2020 to 2021: 9%. Overall: 2019 to 2021: 0%. Women artists. 2019 to 2020: -10%. 2020 to 2021: 6%. Overall: 2019 to 2021: -5%. Men artists. 2019 to 2020: -19%. 2020 to 2021: 34%. Overall: 2019 to 2021: 9%. All artists. 2019 to 2020: -7%. 2020 to 2021: 15%. Overall: 2019 to 2021: 7%. Source: Hill Strategies analysis of custom data commissioned from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey.

Limitations of the Labour Force Survey for the arts and culture. The Labour Force Survey (LFS) provides timely and accurate estimates, particularly for employed and unemployed workers in the overall labour force, where monthly data are available and reliable. Given the relatively small sample size of the monthly survey (56,000 households), data on smaller population groups have higher margins of error. To counter this limitation, my analysis focuses on annual averages (not monthly data). Other important limitations of the LFS follow: 1) It captures data on Indigenous workers only every three months and only started capturing data on racialized workers in the summer of 2020. Given the relatively small sample size, I included very limited demographic information in my request. 2) People’s description of their main job during the reference period is used to classify them into occupations. Some data on secondary occupations is available but is not covered in this report. 3) The questionnaire captures salaries only, not self-employment earnings. Because of this limitation (and the high proportion of self-employed arts and culture workers), I did not include income data in my custom request. 4) No data are available for 2SLGBTQIA+, D/deaf, and disabled workers. The Canadian census is a more robust source of information, including intersectional information and data on self-employment incomes. However, the census only takes place every five years. Neither the LFS nor the census can provide insights into the reasons behind statistical trends, such as why and how certain groups of workers have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.