Jottings on Gender
They say that when something is just on the edge of your comfort zone, that means you’ve hit the sweet spot. You should go for it. It’s not so far out of your bailiwick as to be terrifying and thus paralysing, but nor is it the safe and obvious path either. This week’s post falls into that domain for me. There’s an elephant in the room - worth addressing early in this journey, but it’s a big topic and thus a little daunting. Nevertheless, I didn’t start this blog just to write about the easy stuff. Today, I want to talk about gender in the context of hand work.
I’ve had a really interesting journey through womanhood. From the beginning I had very strong role models in both my mother and grandmother who were highly capable, fiercely independent women. I also attended a girls’ school from Years 7-12 which was a superb experience academically and a disaster socially. Importantly though, my teachers backed up the message I was getting from home - I could do whatever I wanted.
So I pursued my studies in Physics and Maths without ever stopping to think that it might be a non-traditional choice for women. In the second half of my undergraduate science degree, I was regularly the only woman in the room and there were times when other people drew my attention to that, but with a few clear exceptions that I only recognised in hindsight as blatant sexual discrimination, I sailed through blissfully unaware. My studies led me into a career in exploration geophysics, another setting that was strongly male dominated, but here at least there were a few women like me. Sometimes there were now two or even three of us in the room!
For a couple of years in the mid 1990s, my science career took a detour whilst I ran the Women in Science and Engineering Project at UWA. This was the first time when I consciously reflected on my own professional choices as a woman, rather than just as someone who happened to be a doing course and a job that apparently was more attractive to men. I realised that I had been lucky not to encounter barriers that many other young women had met. But my antennae were now raised and I was more aware of the societal expectations and systemic discrimination that impact women’s career paths and choices.
So it’s a complete contrast for me, after spending so much of my first professional life in a strongly male-dominated field, to now work in an arena that is heavily skewed in the opposite direction. I have never had a male adult student in any of my in-person classes, and just one in an online class. My children’s classes are less gender biased. I often have boys under ten who are more than happy to come and wield a needle for a few hours, but something happens as they head towards their teenage years. In Australia at any rate, they disappear almost completely from embroidery (at least in public), and as far as I can tell, from most other textile crafts too. Embroidery, knitting, crochet, felting, patchwork, and quilting are very much women’s work in modern Australia, and in many other Western countries too.
It’s interesting though that at the “celebrity” end of these crafts, quite a few men feature. I mentioned Kaffe Fassett a few weeks ago. Pretty much anyone who is a keen quilter, needlepointer, or knitter has heard of his work. One of the most well known podcasts in the needlepoint world, Fiber Talk, is led by a man, Gary Parr. A popular voice in the cross-stitch world is Jamie Chalmers, aka Mr X-Stitch.
Please don’t get me wrong. I love the contribution that all these men are making, but I have to ask some questions. Would a TEDx talk on “Why X-stitch is important” have garnered over 16,000 views if it had been given by any one of the thousands and thousands of women who have cross-stitched all their lives, rather than by Mr X-Stitch? If women form by far the vast majority of practitioners at the grass roots level, at the shop owner level, and at the designer and teacher level, why could I so readily pick out men at the stitching “celebrity” level? And vice versa, where are the men at the grass roots level? They must be there, and I have met a handful over the past decade, but I could literally count them on one hand so they are few and far between in my experience.
A search for “men in embroidery” on the internet reveals a few articles and videos that refer to men’s growing participation in the textile arts. There are even articles about “manbroiderers”, although it beats me why they need their own special name. In the UK at least, the participation of men in textile crafts is growing, albeit slowly and off a very low base. In a wryly humorous twist, all the thumbnails in the “Images” part of my internet search show men wearing embroidery rather than doing it. Google didn’t quite catch my meaning it seems.
I’m sure that some of you at this point are thinking that my take so far has been very one-sided. I should look at some of the more traditional male crafts and submit them to the same examination. I can't bring the same level of personal experience to these areas so my observations are more general in nature, but I can draw a couple of parallels. An internet search for “famous woodworkers” throws up a variety of lists and links that usually include at least one or more women, so leading female woodworkers are definitely making a name for themselves. Another search for “women in woodwork” reveals a range of articles about women’s growing participation in the craft and the thumbnail images all show women doing woodwork (this time Google understands!). Woodwork is still a male dominated domain both professionally and as a hobby, but female participation is slowly growing. There would also appear to be a much more concerted drive to encourage women into woodwork than to encourage men into embroidery.
There are of course craft and art practices that are much more gender neutral. Painting and drawing would generally be regarded as equally accessed and accessible regardless of gender in the modern world. Male artists still dominate the lists when it comes to the names of widely known famous artists, but at least from my observations at the community art centre where I teach, the participation by both men and women in painting classes is much more equal than in the textile arts.
Although it took place 30 years ago, the following is an interesting representation of the wider craft culture. In 1993 an exhibition celebrating the “Year of American Craft: A Celebration of the Creative Work of the Hand” was curated by Michael W. Monroe at the request of the then new First Lady, Hillary Clinton. The show displayed 72 objects crafted from glass, fibre, metal and wood. Of the 77 contributing artists, 21 were female. Hopefully a similar exhibition today would have a better gender balance. In my humble opinion, just over one quarter female representation in a major craft exhibition doesn’t match my personal experience of women’s everyday participation in this important cultural endeavour.
All of which brings me to the real reason that I was prompted to write this post. Over the past two years, I’ve dived down the rabbit hole of finding out about hand work and it’s links to learning, education, craftsmanship, manual labour, and mental health. I have started to amass a small library of books and articles. One book often leads to another and so my collection steadily grows. I’ve been particularly interested in the books that examine the role of hand work from a philosophical standpoint. What do we know about the role of hands, manual labour and craftsmanship in our development as a species and a society? How does it impact the ways that we live and learn and what are the values that we attribute to that work? There is a lot of really interesting material to read on this topic - but I noticed recently that less than a quarter of the books I have collected so far are written by women. What??? That number is scarily similar to the level of female representation in that major craft exhibition thirty years ago. If we take craft and hand work as a whole, I think (hope!) we can reasonably assume that men and women are participating equally, if differently. So why are more men writing about it, especially from a philosophical, anthropological and economic viewpoint? I don’t know the answer to that question but I think being aware that the bias exists is important.
A small selection of my growing “hands” collection. I have many more as e-books, but they don’t photograph so well!
To be clear, women write a lot of books about the process of craft, and also the emotional and health benefits of their chosen craft practice. In my field, embroidery, the vast majority of these books are written by women and consumed by women. I have a whole bookshelf of those books! But the anecdotal evidence of my growing “hands” collection suggests that the books about the role of that work in society are largely being written by men. I can’t help feeling that this represents an important disconnect. Let me reiterate again - I have no problem with the men writing these books. They are making a fantastic contribution to the discussion and I have really enjoyed reading their views. But I am concerned that the female experience is not being represented as clearly as it could be in this evolving discussion.
Let's try and tease out this idea just a little further. So far we have seen that textile crafts are heavily female dominated in Western society whereas woodwork, for example, is more male dominated. Women are increasing their participation in the latter, albeit slowly, whereas men are still largely absent in the embroidery world. Some of you might take issue with me on that last point, citing stitching men that you follow on Instagram. I won't disagree with you - I follow them too. But I return to my earlier point - I have only ever had one man in any of my classes - and I've been doing this for a decade.
So why are more women participating in woodwork but men are not taking up embroidery? I asked my husband this question a couple of days ago. He suggested that it might be something to do with tools, knowing that for himself he loves the feeling of satisfaction that comes from working with just the right tool to get the job done. We brought that idea crashing down fairly quickly. Lots of men like to paint and draw, so the lack of complex tools in embroidery is not the issue.
I asked my sister the same question and she suggested that it was most likely something to do with perceived value. As a broad generalisation, an object crafted from wood is perceived as having higher value than a hand embroidered item - both in a utilitarian sense and an economic sense. This is an important point because I know that in cultures where working hand embroidery can be used to support a family, there are plenty of male embroiderers. If you do an internet search for images showing "embroiderers in India", you will find numerous photos of men working exquisite stitches. I think my sister hit the nail on the head (if you'll pardon the metaphor). The value question is critically important, especially if it is tied to the items produced rather than the benefits of the process itself.
It's a complex topic and even as I publish this post, I feel I haven’t wrapped my ahead around it adequately. I just feel very strongly that we need to be aware that understanding gender participation and representation in this space is really important. We need to make sure that the discussion is not just about valuing manual labour as a profession (although I am all for that!), and nor is it only about the value of the items produced using a particular art or craft practice. It's about valuing the hand work process itself. And to do that, I believe that it’s crucial that we make sure that the voices and experiences of both genders are equally represented in the discussion.
Footnote: As I was finishing this post, I chatted about it to my 18-year old daughter and niece. They were both really interested in the discussion. However, they also noted that in their demographic there are a lot of young men sharing knitting, crochet and stitching content, particularly on TikTok. One of the things I love about my children’s generation is that they are really comfortable confronting and overturning gender stereotypes. Maybe everything that I have written here will become irrelevant as these young people start to influence societal norms. I hope so :)
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