Are passion and ambition enough to support the career of a female arts manager?

Abstract

In an environment where the relationship between career and other aspects of female managers lives are important, this narrative study considers how gender influences female arts managers’ career progression in arts organisations in Australia. While Australia might seem irrelevant to other parts of the world, the art world is global, international and subject to similar forces in developed nations, making our findings of value to others. Further, much of the literature on careers comes from the United States and Britain, where careers are commonly researched from multiple disciplinary fields including business studies, human resource management and organisational behaviour. We build on this previous research and we recognise the value of understanding regional differences in the study of career advancement. This rationale underpins the intention to expand the scope of career research in arts organisations by reporting the experiences of managers’ from the Asia Pacific region.