World
| Culture Gap
Widens Between
the Sexes. [World] In the world of culture, it also takes two to tango.
And if the artist is often a man, the public is often a woman.
That, at
least, is how it looks in many developed countries these days. The cultural dance
goes on thanks in good measure to women. They are the main "consumers" of
high culture, whether literature, the visual arts, ballet, theater or classical music.
Actually, this is no great revelation. It has long been known that far more
women read fiction than men (by a ratio margin of 2 to 1 in Britain, for example), while
the bigger picture has been confirmed by numerous studies in the United States and Europe.
Attention has focused more on why this should be the case. Among the
competing explanations: Women are more "sensitive," they have greater leisure
time, they are less obsessed with making money, their education is more arts-oriented and,
more than men, they value the importance of transmitting culture to their children.
Still, two recent French government reports suggest the topic merits
deeper
exploration. "The Feminization of Cultural Practices," which
compares
polling data of 1973 and 2003, endorses the known trend. "The Gender Factory of
Cultural Taste," which analyzes the cultural education of boys and girls inside the
family, describes the shape of things to come. The reports coincide on
one
fundamental point: The phenomenon is neither a statistical fluke nor a passing fad.
Since the 1960s, there has been a fundamental change in the profile of cultural
"consumers." Not only do women read more books, visit more museums and art
exhibitions and attend more performing arts events, but the male-female cultural gap also
continues to widen. |