Women at British auction houses earn less than half of what their male colleagues earn. That has The Art Newspaper Wednesday, based on an investigation.
The art newspaper investigated the gender differences in salary at the three major auction houses. It can do this because British companies with more than 250 employees have been obliged to make salary data public for four years.
All in all, the pay gap has barely improved since 2018. At Bonhams, the numbers even worsened in 2020/21. For every pound the men earned at the auction house during that period, the women received 48 pence (up from 61 pence in 2017/18). The percentage of female employees in the four highest pay scales fell at Bonhams from 25.3 percent in 2018 to zero last year.
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Notoriously bad
At Christie’s, women still earn more than 25 percent less. That figure has remained unchanged in recent years. However, the auction house now has more women in the highest pay scales: 51 percent against 43 percent four years earlier. The difference in bonuses received between men and women, 40 percent four years ago, has even disappeared.
At management level, the differences are still large: only one in three directors at Christie’s is female. CEO Guillaume Cerutti argued for equality in 2020. This year, he hopes to reach “at least 40 percent women at the top,” according to a spokesperson.
At Sotheby’s, the pay gap has widened slightly. Women earn 24.9 percent less at that auction house.
Maternity leave and childcare arrangements are notoriously bad at auction houses, says The Art Newspaper. Museums and other public institutions in the British art sector are, in fact, ‘beacons of gender equality’, according to the paper.
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