Teachers and mentors are the architects of human potential, not merely instructors. Beyond the classroom, mentors provide priceless counsel and direction. The most important thing they do is instill confidence. They foster confidence in people by offering honest feedback and unwavering encouragement, empowering them to take obstacles head-on and believe in their skills.  

It is generally agreed upon that female teachers are beneficial to their female students, especially when they act as anti-stereotypical role models. We examine education in rural U.S. communities around 1940, when there were fewer professional female role models besides teachers, and we discover that female pupils performed better when they had a higher number of female primary school instructors. The effects last a lifetime: female pupils who had female teachers were more likely to advance in their education by finishing high school and going to college, as well as having longer lifespans and greater lifetime family incomes. 

The Stats Are Truthful   

Women have never enjoyed equal treatment in the art industry, and even now, their undervaluation and underrepresentation in galleries, museums, and auction houses persist. Statistics are helpful for determining the extent of the issue, but they won't end discrimination.  

Key Facts about Women in Art  

• The most expensive work sold by a woman artist at auction is Georgia O'Keeffe's "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1" (1932), which sold in 2014 for $44.4 million—over $400 million less than the auction record for a male artist, Leonardo Da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi," sold in 2017 for $450.3 million. 
• In 2018, only one of the top 20 most popular exhibitions worldwide was headlined by a woman artist: Joana Vasconcelos's "I'm Your Mirror" at the Guggenheim Bilbao. 
• Women earn 70% of bachelor of fine arts and 65–75% of master of fine arts degrees in the U.S., but only 46% of working artists (across all arts disciplines) are women. 
• ArtReview's 2018 Power 100 list of the most influential people in the contemporary art world included 40% women, a slight improvement from previous years. 
• Women make up a majority of professional art museum staff, but they remain underrepresented in leadership positions. 
• At the Art Basel fairs (Basel, Miami, and Hong Kong), women constituted less than a quarter of the artists on view over the past four years. 
• There are no women in the top 0.03% of the auction market, where 41% of the profit is concentrated. Overall, 96% of artworks sold at auction are by male artists. 
• In a 2018 study of 820,000 exhibitions across public and commercial sectors, only one-third featured women artists. 
• Only 13.7% of living artists represented by galleries in Europe and North America are women. 
• In 2018, just 24% of the 27,000 artists shown at art fairs were women, with total art fair sales amounting to $16.5 billion. 
• In the U.K., 64% of undergraduates and 65% of postgraduates in creative arts and design are women, but 68% of the artists represented at top London commercial galleries are men. 
• Three of the most visited museums in the world—the British Museum, the Louvre, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art—have never had female directors. 
• Women now run 47.6% of museums in the United States, an increase from 32% in 2005, though mainly those with the smallest budgets. 
• From 2008 to the first half of 2019, more than $196.6 billion was spent on art at auction, with work made by women accounting for just $4 billion (around 2%). 
• The National Endowment for the Arts found that as women artists age, they earn progressively less than their male counterparts. Women artists aged 55–64 earn only 66¢ for each dollar earned by men. 
• Nearly half (45.8%) of visual artists in the United States are women, but they earn, on average, 74¢ for every dollar made by male artists. 
• From 2011 to 2017, the Venice Biennale featured 26–43% women artists. The 2019 edition achieved gender parity, with 53% women artists. 
• The record for the most expensive work by a living woman artist at auction was set by Jenny Saville's "Propped" (1992), which sold for $12.4 million in 2018. This is still dwarfed by the record for a living male artist, Jeff Koons, whose work sold for $91.1 million in 2019. 
• Over the past decade, only 11% of acquisitions and 14% of exhibitions at 26 prominent U.S. museums were of work by female artists. 
• Only 29% of the Turner Prize winners, one of the best-known visual art awards, have been women. In 2017, Lubaina Himid became the first woman of color to win. 
• Women's art at auction is sold at a 47.6% discount compared to men's. 
• Of the 3,050 galleries in the Artsy database, 10% do not feature a single woman artist, while only 8% represent more women than men. Almost half represent 25% or fewer women. 
• In the field of architecture, only 7% of Pritzker Prize winners and less than 3% of AIA Gold Medal winners have been women. 
• Women hold 30% of art museum director positions at museums with budgets over $15 million and earn 75¢ for every dollar earned by male directors. 
• Though women earn 71% of art degrees in Australia, only 33.9% of artists represented in state-run galleries and museums are women, a decrease of 3% from 2016. 

In Summary

Female art instructors and mentors act as role models and advocates for their pupils, enabling them to develop their Creativity, embrace their individual voices, and confidently face the obstacles of the art world. Beyond providing technical training, their mentorship offers priceless advice, support, and networking opportunities that enable budding artists to succeed.