Cherishing experience: the artistic and the gendered self
Women take part in receptive artistic activities more often than men. Yet, we know relatively little about the influence of gender in how people experience art. This research explored how people’s gender identity relates to the way they experience art.
The first part of the research developed a new way of thinking about art and gender. Rather than an object, we viewed art as a particular type of experience in which people use their cognitive capabilities to make sense of life with an artwork. We moved beyond the traditional idea that gender consists of two categories, women and men; opting to study gender in terms of degrees of masculinity and femininity. This led to a new framework for studying the many factors that shape artistic experiences, including bodily reactions, learned behaviors, and sense-making.
The second part tested these ideas through two studies. In the first, participants listened to instrumental music while we measured their body movements and asked them to describe their experiences. People who identified more strongly with femininity tended to report more intense artistic experiences, while stronger identification with masculinity was linked to less intense experiences. In the second study, participants experienced digital artworks and music. Women and people with more feminine identities reported artistic experiences more often, while men and people with more masculine identities reported fewer.
The findings show that gender identity influences how people experience art in complex ways and highlight the importance of moving beyond simple gender categories in the empirical research of art.