Sexism in the photography industry

[swifty]

Since it now appears the another thread is not genuine in discussing the topic of sexism in the photography industry, this is a separate thread on this topic.

Recently, it has been highlighted that of the 32 Nikon Ambassadors that were promoting the launch of the D850, none were females.
Had a further look and the 32 ambassadors were from the Asia-pacific region, including Australia.
Of the global ambassadors promoting the D850 launch, there are 4 and one of whom is female.

Those are the numbers and the facts. So is this a problem in the industry?

Some issues to consider:
- is this due to some form of corporate glass ceiling for female photographers preventing them from reaching ambassadorship?
- is this due to a lack of interest or unequal interest levels between genders
- is this issue regional or global?
- is this issue confined to Nikon or across the entire industry?
- is this issue confined to the photographic industry or the electronics as a whole or wider?
- Anecdotally it appears there are many more male photography reviewers than female ones? If the internet has allowed for self-publishing such that anyone can publish content, what is the discrepancy based on?
- What is ambassadorship and how are they sought? Peer to peer, selection from the company, application from the photographer?

Of course there are many more points to consider so please give your thoughts?

Rick or Kym: would it be possible to know the gender demographics of this forum? This is out of interest and would give an additional data point to consider.

It'll be interesting to know what proportion of professional photographers are male:female and how this compares across industries if anyone knows any figures.

[Cage]

[arthurking83]

I'd be curious as to the M/F ratio too.

But lets try to make some sense of this (non) issue.

* Nikon has many ambassadors for their products.
* Nikon have many products, the D850 is one of many.
* Nikon use these ambassadors to help promote these products.

It obviously follows that these ambassadors need to be using those product to help showcase them.

Scenario: Lets say there are 32 ambassadors for Nikon, 8 of which are females. Obviously that's too low a ratio for western tastes, but that could well be above typical representative numbers for any other non western region! But for this scenario this part isn't important(yet). I'm just running potential reasons as to why this issue raised it stupid self as clickbait .. I mean an issue.

Of those ambassadors, not all of them will be using or have a need for the D850.
There are obviously photographers that need DXXXs and there are photographers that need DY's. Insert your preferred number in place of Xs and Ys.

I'm sure there were male ambassadors that weren't asked to attend/assist/help .. or even look at the D850 .
Nikon obviously wouldn't ask the D5-only using ambassador to this promo event .. would they.
While this D5-only using photographer would be very knowledgeable with respect to photography and using a Nikon camera, this event was for the purpose of espousing the virtues of the D850!

So maybe Nikon only request this 'one' female photographer to do this event .. did it not occur to any of the blathering idiots that maybe Nikon only has one female as a Nikon D850 ambassador? (EDIT: in the Asian region)

There's probably 100 D5-using female ambassadors out there for Nikon, but they're not D850 proficient to hep out as thoroughly as a proper D850 ambassador.

So as a society are we now compelled to disregard true ability simply for the sake of gender equality?

Lets take this to any other industry: Politics, Education ... whatever.
Lets say we want full equality for the sake of gender. The labour party once claimed that they want 50/50 gender numbers ... and the only purpose for this is for keeping up appearances.

So the (western)world is headed into a era of doom looking to be of monumental proportions simply because there's a need to make sure that political correctness is adhered too and not merit.

Do you want your child educated by a stupid half knowledgeable idiot(irrespective of gender) teacher .. or the one that best fits the job role?

As said in the other non thread .. it's a stupid news item of little value picked up by under resourced so called news outlets.
I did search(basic tho that it was) the issue and found no mention of it in Asian region news outlets. Only seems to have been propagated by the usual suspects.

--- useless ranting here ----

A small point of view from a non pro type photography geek. years ago when I was an adhoc courier, our main workload represented the photography industry and the type setting industry. Due to changes in both those industries since then that work literally all dried up.
90% of our workload was photographic or type setting stuff .. and 90% of that was to and from ad agencies and newspapers.
I got to see a lot of the inside workings of the typical photo studio in and around Melbourne. Back in those days it was all Prahran, South Yarra, and St Kilda. This is where all the important photo studios were located. Very few on the fringes for this industry, and of coruse there were the odd portrait studio in some obscure suburbs here and there. Back then tho if you were or wanted to be someone you had to be in those areas. There was a notable gravitation into Richmond over the 20 years that I did this work .. and it paid very well considering the work and skill needed to do it.
I still clearly remember Lisa Saad's studio in Richmond up on some Seberian like no-mans land on a middling floor level of a semi converted warehouse .. the lift was slow as molasses, you had to manually lift half the top of the door which then linked to the bottom half of the lift door .... massive great red thing you could easily drive a car into. I think she was one of the leading figures that pushed out of Prahran and into Richmond wayyy back when. her studio was always populated by women .. and the occasional camp male.
I can tell you with 100% clarity and certainty that over 90% of all those photographers were predominantly women!(that was one of the joys of doing what I did back then .. noting I was in my 20s )
Many of the ad execs in that section of the ad industry were also female.
I haven't an inkling of the make up of the ad industry as a whole, but my observations of that part .. the photography related section was predominantly and heavily weighted towards females employees/contractors/creatives/and so on.


it was interesting to see this too, because it was just so ingrained that when I'd come across a male in the industry, mainly on the photography side of the process .. it kind of set you back a bit. I still remember the first digital image I'd seen from a studio in Prahran too.
Can't remember the studio name, but still remember their location, but they're long gone now. I remember the Camera was a Canon too .. large body 1D type thing.
It took them 45mins to get the shot on the camera to the PC and edited quickly for me to courier the Zip drive to the ad agency in St Kilda road. A $10 job turned into a $50 job simply due to that wait time.
I thought you ripper .. bring on more digital photography .. then of course the internet changed, dial up evolved into broadband and the rest is history(I was out of there long before it got to the zero work stage tho).

--- Summary ---

I don't think, and can't imagine that, sexism would be a problem in the photography industry. If anything I'd imagine a cohort of females conspiring against male upstarts and making it harder for the males to get into their workforce.

[swifty]

Not really. Seriously.

Being in the privileged group, one is often oblivious to issues of a marginalized group, this being a general statement.
So since the issue has been raised, I'm curious as to what the problem is, especially from a female photographer's POV.

However, I know as many male:female photographers in real life but none of the female ones I know participate in forums as far as I know.
I'm not sure why, maybe they're too busy taking photographs and its us men that are having our mini-wars online.
So we might not get much or a fair female representation from the forum community.

Maybe the female pro photographers are also too busy shooting to worry about ambassadorship (which might be seen as some form of accolade) and the geekiness of promoting a new fandangle camera.

[Tannin]

That's not evidence. Forums are a boy thing anyway. Every single forum I can think of is mostly male. These include a wide variety of interests - photography, rotating mechanical computer storage, cars, Australian football, infotech news, concreting and plastering, renewable energy. Every one of them is all-male or almost all-male. It's normal.

Hmmm ... possibly there is a slight bias going on in terms of my forum subject selection here.

[arthurking83]

.... the geekiness of promoting a new fandangle camera.

I think there's a lot of that embedded in this D850 ambassadorial fiasco, for reasons already mentioned.

[swifty]

Hmmm ... possibly there is a slight bias going on in terms of my forum subject selection here.

Ever been on a parenting or expats forum?

[Tannin]

^ My point precisely.

[ricktas]

Rick or Kym: would it be possible to know the gender demographics of this forum? This is out of interest and would give an additional data point to consider.

Although that could be interesting, I don't have that data. When you register or edit your profile, there is not (and has never been) a field for members to state if they are Male / Female / Trans / Undecided. So the data just does not exist. I could.. if I had a few free days, or was really really bored. go through the members and from usenames and emails, try and decide if each one is a male or a female, and tally them up, but ... no.. that ain't happening.

Even a look at the last 20 registrations. There are 5 that could be male (email has Jim /Alan in the name). There are 4 that could be female (Mary / Sandra in email address) and the rest.. well you tell me if instra1 or rider or brj1 or info@ are male or female...hehe.

So in the interests of fairness we have 23005 members 11502.5 are male and 11502.5 are female

[ricktas]

I don't think sexism is the right word here. Perhaps gender inequality, but sexism suggests distinct choices to exclude people based on their sex.

Gender inequality in the workplace is an issue worldwide. Look at our own government, we have had ONE female prime minister in 117 years of this country. I think a lot has been done in the last 10-15 years to try and bring a balance. Photography is no different to any other industry and yes it perhaps can improve, but I don't think photography is worse than any other industry.

Now, when you start looking at board rooms of companies, some countries are lagging behind others in creating equality there, but you also have centuries of local traditions, patriarchal systems and other biases to overcome. Japan has approximately 3-5% of company board members being women. But we cannot expect companies in those countries to suddenly accept a western ideal, when we cannot even achieve it all the time, ourselves.

There is also the still remaining biases that certain jobs are more acceptable if you are a certain sex. The vast majority of registered nurses in Australia are female. The vast majority of builders are male. Then you get industries like hairdressing which has a lot of females, and a lot of gay males. Why? Because even though we talk about equality, there is this underlying belief that some roles are for specific genders. This is breaking down, but we have a long way to go. Why would photography not have these same issues that general society has.

However, I do not think photography as an industry sets out to be sexist, or even discriminate against a particular gender.

Nikon have copped a blast recently, (see the other thread) that was no fault of their own. They invited people and some declined. It could have easily been that the males declined and a mostly female turnout occurred. Would we then be praising Nikon for that? I think not!

[arthurking83]

....

So in the interests of fairness we have 23005 members 11502.5 are male and 11502.5 are female

Now I'm curious .. who's the member sitting on the fence?

[Geoff79]

Nikon have copped a blast recently, (see the other thread) that was no fault of their own. They invited people and some declined. It could have easily been that the males declined and a mostly female turnout occurred. Would we then be praising Nikon for that? I think not!

Well if that had happened, Nikon obviously just had all the women there as eye candy, to promote their product to males. Obviously.

Sickos.

Sexist creeps.

Because that's how it works in 2017. If there was not an issue to be had, someone would create an issue to be had.

I remember the other day I was at my local park and I suggestively ran my right hand through my hair. I was then approached by someone who mentioned that they had seen the pleasure my right hand had endured, being run through my recently washed hair (shampoo and conditioner) and suggested that the discrimination I showed towards my left hand was nothing short of sickening.

[arthurking83]

(Geoff)

[Steve Axford]

Since it now appears the another thread is not genuine in discussing the topic of sexism in the photography industry, this is a separate thread on this topic.

Recently, it has been highlighted that of the 32 Nikon Ambassadors that were promoting the launch of the D850, none were females.
Had a further look and the 32 ambassadors were from the Asia-pacific region, including Australia.
Of the global ambassadors promoting the D850 launch, there are 4 and one of whom is female.

Those are the numbers and the facts. So is this a problem in the industry?

Some issues to consider:
- is this due to some form of corporate glass ceiling for female photographers preventing them from reaching ambassadorship?
- is this due to a lack of interest or unequal interest levels between genders
- is this issue regional or global?
- is this issue confined to Nikon or across the entire industry?
- is this issue confined to the photographic industry or the electronics as a whole or wider?
- Anecdotally it appears there are many more male photography reviewers than female ones? If the internet has allowed for self-publishing such that anyone can publish content, what is the discrepancy based on?
- What is ambassadorship and how are they sought? Peer to peer, selection from the company, application from the photographer?

Of course there are many more points to consider so please give your thoughts?

Rick or Kym: would it be possible to know the gender demographics of this forum? This is out of interest and would give an additional data point to consider.

It'll be interesting to know what proportion of professional photographers are male:female and how this compares across industries if anyone knows any figures.

I agree, sexism is rife in our community, and clearly here too. At least half the photographers I know are female, yet almost none of the ambassadors are. Why not? Is it that no women want to be given free cameras? I suspect not.

[swifty]

Well if that had happened, Nikon obviously just had all the women there as eye candy, to promote their product to males. Obviously.

Sickos.

Sexist creeps.

Because that's how it works in 2017. If there was not an issue to be had, someone would create an issue to be had.

I remember the other day I was at my local park and I suggestively ran my right hand through my hair. I was then approached by someone who mentioned that they had seen the pleasure my right hand had endured, being run through my recently washed hair (shampoo and conditioner) and suggested that the discrimination I showed towards my left hand was nothing short of sickening.

What shampoo and conditioner?
Hey, I wanna know the left hand missed out on

[arthurking83]

...... yet almost none of the ambassadors are. Why not? Is it that no women want to be given free cameras? I suspect not.

(for Nikon Aus) I can't find any info other than what's on their (pretty stupid) MyNikonLife website. They list 7 ambassadors, 0 women.

Is that sexism, oversight, or simply lack of entrants/ability(by Nikon Australia's .. whatever .. standards)

[Steve Axford]

You seriously think it may be due to lack of ability?

[Tannin]

^ Not a chance. The best bird photographer on this forum, for example, is a woman. If I was a camera manufacturer looking for an ambassador from amongst our membership, I know who I'd be calling.

[swifty]

I agree, sexism is rife in our community, and clearly here too. At least half the photographers I know are female, yet almost none of the ambassadors are. Why not? Is it that no women want to be given free cameras? I suspect not.

I think as Rick said, we gotta distinguish between unequal distribution of gender in the workforce and sexism.
With the latter it is some form of bias preventing workers of a certain gender from reaching the same potential as their opposite sex.
So the numbers obviously show unequal distribution. The question is is it due to sexism?
Anybody know how one becomes an ambassador? And what perks and limitations are imposed on the ambassador?

[Steve Axford]

Yet they don't???? Is that sexism, or do we call it some non-emotive term, like gender equality (not even gender inequality), in the hope that people will just continue to ignore it.