Women Are Leaving the Arts — and the Numbers Explain Why
Nearly half of Gen Z and millennial women are considering leaving the arts within the next five years, according to Hardwiring Change: Buying Back Time, the second annual report from Artnet and the Association of Women in the Arts (AWITA). The finding is especially stark in a sector where women make up nearly 80 percent of the workforce. The issue is no longer simply representation. It is retention.
The report, launched at Deutsche Bank’s London headquarters on Monday, June 8, 2026, before an audience of 200, points to a cluster of pressures that are pushing women out: inadequate pay, unclear criteria for advancement, and administrative work that consumes too much of the day. Around 76 percent of women ages 35 to 54 said they face structural barriers tied to gender, race, or class.
That burden is not evenly distributed. Ese Jade Onojeuro, curator of this year’s British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, said diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives remain essential, but that in institutions historically shaped as white spaces, “the burden of change really falls on them” when people of color are brought in to lead it. Touria El Glaoui, founder of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, made a similar point from the perspective of retention: equity strategies matter most when they improve pay, progression, and the ability to evolve within a job.
The report also highlights the scale of administrative overload. Nearly half of full-time workers said they spend at least half their working time on admin tasks. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they use AI tools in their daily work, a sign that many are trying to reclaim time in a system that keeps expanding the workload. Alexandra Steinacker Clark, author of Working In Art: How to Build a Career in the Art World, said the technology can help only if institutions do not respond by raising expectations even further. Elaine Bledell, chief executive of Southbank Centre, said admin “seems to disproportionately fall on women” and noted that her institution, the largest art center in Europe, has adopted a formal AI policy.
Leadership remains the clearest test of whether change is real. Bledell said she is the first female chief executive in Southbank Centre’s 75-year history. Rosanna Cundall added that across the 15 national museums in the U.K. there are only four female chairs and five female leaders. That imbalance matters because the cohort most likely to leave now is also the one approaching senior roles.
The report’s message is blunt: if institutions want women to stay, they will need to make advancement legible, distribute labor more fairly, and put more women — and more people of color — in positions where policy is actually made.
