Why are there so few women cartoonists? · 13 August 2008
Jen Sorensen has posted her thoughts on the problem (below).
Personally I always scratched my head at the reasons there were fewer women in cartooning; political cartooning in particular. Some of the most incisive and biting cartoonists I’ve met in Australia are women, yet I could count all of the women working professionally in political cartooning in Australia on one hand.
To date, the consensus when asked is that the Aussie political cartooning industry (like that of its American and UK counterparts) are just a big ‘boys club’; like many of the old newspaper art rooms.
I haven’t sensed a shift in the phenomenon, but I do hope more women consider cartooning as a career when they leave school. Whenever I teach cartooning to schools or school holiday courses I encourage all kids to consider it as a job option, and make a point of saying “It’s not just a job for boys.” Because it’s not!
Here’s a byte from Jen’s post:
“Why are there so few female political cartoonists? I’ve been asked that question many times over the years. It’s OK, I don’t mind. We’re something of a rare breed. Exact statistics are difficult to find—even the national group Association of American Editorial Cartoonists can only estimate the national number of political cartoonists, let alone break them down by gender, ethnicity, or class. But to give you a rough idea, of the association’s 185 current regular members, only 15 are women. I’m one of them.
My short (and admittedly Zen-like) explanation is that there are so few female political cartoonists largely because there are so few female political cartoonists. Drawing cartoons and comics has traditionally been a guy thing—a somewhat nerdy guy thing, but a guy thing nonetheless. Without role models who look like you, or friends with similar interests, any activity becomes less inviting. It might not even cross your mind as a possibility.
But when did political cartooning first become the province of dudes?”
Click here to read the rest of the article.
