"Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"

It's a question that has plagued the masses for ages. We have all these great artists: Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Rembrandt, Picasso, Warhol, etc., but why are none of them women? Some may argue that women simply are not as talented as men, and there is something about the difference in femininity and masculinity that allows men to naturally be more suited towards creating art.

However, the article, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? by Linda Nochlin, puts a different argument into place. "The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and education-education understood to include everything that happens to us from the moment we enter this world of meaningful symbols, signs, and signals."This is an argument that I think is overlooked in a great deal of discussions on inequality. People tend to argue that, women have the same opportunities as men to go into any field, and that any differences in employment, or other types of thinking, are due solely to differences in gender. That may work for something like bodybuilding, where the strongest woman still will not be as strong as the average man, due to physiology and anatomical differences, but that does not mean that both are not extremely qualified for the job. When it comes to other practices, that do not require physical strength, the playing field should be more even, but it is not. People tend to ignore that things are stacked in favor of men, and while not discrediting their success, it is set up in a way that many women can never succeed.

In Believing is Seeing, by Mary Anne Staniszewski, she makes the claim that, "the ability to do something- the power to achieve, rule, invent, and create- is founded upon on individual's belief that he or she has the right to do it. An individual must have faith in his or her ability, and then, most important, there must be access to the arenas of achievement and power."(pg. 128) In the beginning of the Western Art scene, many women did not have access to this arena, as they were instead expected to be homemaker and rear children, which is not conducive to really any other sort of activity. Things have become better recently, as there are many distinguished women artists, but they still have not achieved the status that their male counterparts have.