Positive Discrimination, Gender Quotas and Feminist Narratives in Museums of Contemporary Art

Abstract

Aside from a certain reluctance to admit the extent of its severity, the well-known gender gap, unfavourable to women artists, faces the difficulty of a lack of agreement on the effectiveness of problem-solving methods. This article introduces three types of initiatives implemented in European contemporary art museums in the last decade, in order to explore the faceted debates, the pros and cons of different kinds of actions that have attempted to curb the disproportionate representation of men and women. The case studies analyse measures such as gender quotas, positive discrimination (or positive action) and feminist narratives, with the aim of gaining practical recommendations and inspiration to unblock the apparent lack of institutional efforts.