Women in Art

Artists of different time periods have made it clear that social movements and happenings have a great deal of importance in their work. Whether it is sculptures, paintings on walls in buildings like churches, or on canvas, the way that social movements and the ways in which society has changed their ways of looking at things, in particular women, have been depicted in artwork for centuries. In various forms of art throughout history, women are shown as sex symbols, weak, as servants to men and as housewives, men are depicted as being leaders, masculine, breadwinners, and decision-makers. Simple because society as a whole for the most part believed that way, doesn’t mean it was unheard of for women to seek their rights, however, in most cases, women continued to be seen in those ways in various medias though out time. As far back as the eighteenth century during the Enlightenment period, women were seeing gender differences made within society and some, as did the British writer Mary Wollstonecraft who wrote “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” 1792. She argued that women be have fuller participation in the political process and be better wives and mothers if they were educated (Benton & DiYanni, p 420). Although this was only the beginning of the fight for women’s rights, literature was, like most others forms of art, an active participant in the moves as we’ve seen throughout history. As we know, women continuously were deemed as second class citizens who were not able to own property, work, or do anything short of having and taking care of the children in the household other than being readily available for sex as the man deemed necessary. In the article “Gender Role Stereotypes in Fine Art: A Content Analysis of Art History Books” the author Charlotte G. O’Kelly shares a study made about gender differences in art in the past and in the ways there continues to be differences. Throughout different eras in history, men have typically been the dominate