Why women lack artistic prominence
“Why have there been no great woman artists?”
Note: this was the title of an essay I had to read in AP Art History, by Linda Nochlin, an American art historian. This was my response to the question before I read the essay—which Nochlin answered far more effectively than I did—before I read the essay.
From a biological standpoint, I see this as an indirect result to the earliest stages of our species’ development. In these stages, our ancestors’ only goal was to further their genes through reproduction. Thus, both males and females acted accordingly to their sexual functions.
Males needed to impregnate as many females as possible, and females needed to give birth to as many offspring as possible. And within these two functions, both genders adapted physical roles. Because the male did not have to spend time going through pregnancy, they could continually find more sexual partners to bare their offspring. This required males to be physically free, allowing them to do whatever it took to dominate all other competitors and be chosen by females. Females, in contrast, did not need to be physically free because they did not need to dominate. Their biological role consisted of choosing the fittest partner, giving birth, and caring for their offspring. In short, males needed physical freedom in order to dominate, while females did not because they had no need to dominate.
This physical freedom, I believe, translated into mental freedom. Males used far more mental capacities—with respect to the physical world—than females in order to find possible ways to dominate others. Females biologically had no need for this physical freedom they inherently had. Consequently, they did not put it to use and instead used only specific mental capacities—mainly those that involve choosing partners and caring for their offspring. The most important thing to note is that at the primitive stages, both genders had the same physical freedom and mental freedom: one just decided to disregard it because it was not necessary. This is the expected biological ‘reaction.’
Eventually, these biological reactions became the foundations for civilization—they became societal standards, or systems of thought. Males used to resort to physical freedom in order to dominate; but now humans built civilizations in ways to foster their physical freedom to dominate. Females used to resort to using only specific aspects of their physical freedom (because it was unnecessary in its entirety); but now humans built civilizations in ways to restrict the inherent physical freedom to only these specific aspects—that is, caring for offspring, finding a fit partner, etc. And as a result, these physical restrictions act as mental restrictions.
And thus, “there have been no great woman artists” in history, and why men have achieved seemingly more physical “greatness” than women not only in art, but in other fields as well. Women are born into the societal standards set up by civilization, which have turned biological reactions into systems of thought. These standards foster the male physical freedom to dominate and limit the physical freedom of females to specific tasks—mainly, caring for offspring. These limits on physical freedom then translate to limits on mental freedom.
On a side note, I want to point out that the question deals with the physical world only. As I mentioned, the mental restrictions on women are only restrictions in relation to the physical world. By physical I mean what we can physically touch. The non-physical is the mind and it is infinitely capable of anything. And if we talk about art as a work of the mind—as a spiritual experience rather than a physical one—we can say that women have achieved equal amount of greatness as any Van Gogh or Picasso has.