Abstract

The field of cultural policy has seen a shift towards considerations of diversity, with government bodies increasingly leveraging funding to combat inequality within organisations. A barrier to this aim is a lack of quantitative data, which would provide a means to evaluate the impact of specific policies in practice. This article investigates the relationship between gender inequality at an organisational level and cultural policy at a sectoral level through a case study of Australia’s state-funded opera companies. Drawing on production data from 2005 to 2020, we consider women’s representation as conductors, directors, and designers at the state companies through the lens of Australia’s policy legacy. We find that women experience gender-based disadvantage across the key creative roles of opera production and are further negatively impacted by Australia’s existing policy landscape, which, reflecting the drivers of cultural and economic value, indirectly enables gender inequality in the field.

RAS ID

62023

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of Publication

1-1-2023

Volume

30

Issue

5

Funding Information

University of Melbourne

School

School of Arts and Humanities

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Identifier

Katya Johanson

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7332-4645

Comments

Vincent, C., Johanson, K., & Coate, B. (2023). Risky business: policy legacy and gender inequality in Australian opera production. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 30(5), 631-646. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2023.2239266

Share

 
COinS
 

Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.1080/10286632.2023.2239266