#Girlgaze: The Platform Getting Womxn Creatives Hired
Words by Maya Bewley
It’s not hard to see why @Girlgaze has over 300k followers on Instagram. Scroll through their feed and you’ll find a myriad of art from womxn and non-binary creatives, showcasing their perspectives of the world. But who exactly is Girlgaze, behind the dazzling aesthetics of their carefully curated insta-gallery?
The Girlgaze website, with photos from ANAYANCY and ROCHELLE
Simply put, Girlgaze are a network that seek to create opportunities for a diverse community of artists by connecting them with brands such as Dove, Nike and Google. Artists can apply to the network for free, while companies can pay to browse and source artists for their projects. “The world needs to see what creative work looks like from the girl gaze” says Amanda de Cadenet, founder of the organisation. And true to their name (a subtle inversion on the typical ‘male gaze’) Girlgaze disrupts conventions and allows underrepresented voices to be heard.
Girlgaze founder Amanda de Cadanet
The arts industry is notorious for its struggle with sexism. Guerrilla girls famously claimed in 1989 ‘Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?’. It wasn’t until 2017 that the first woman of color, Lubaina Himid won the valued Turner prize. Later in 2018, a study of 820,000 exhibitions across the public and commercial sectors revealed that only one third featured women artists. From Mary Evans to Mickalene Thomas, talented female artists have and will always exist, yet remain too often marginalised when it comes to the reality of the art world.
Photo by Leona Moore, from the 2017 Girlgaze Exhibition with the Annenberg Space for Photography
That’s why it's refreshing to see a female led company so outwardly committed to improving diversity within the industry. Since its humble beginnings as a hashtag, (where founder de Cadenet called for photographers to share the female perspective), to a successful book release and spiral into globally successful enterprise - womxn have remained at the forefront of Girlgaze’s empowered ethos. In fact, de Cadenet cites her own struggles to get work as a motive for founding the company.
Speaking to InStyle she explains: “Something wasn't adding up," she says. "My work was really good, but no one was paying me. It took me a while to realize that I was experiencing straight-up sexism." In a bid to realign the focus on the artist’s work, the company recently launched a “non-biased” browsing option, meaning that brands looking to hire can only view the candidate’s art portfolio on the network.
From the Girlgaze book, photo by Emma Craft
Yet there’s also a troubling aspect at the heart of Girlgaze. At the end of the day, it is a for-profit company. Can female empowerment really be synonymous with capitalism? At least, their clever marketing might leave you thinking so. Yet if success is reliant on huge corporation’s collaborations, infamous for their own exploitation of female workers - we may need to do a double take. Take Girlgaze’s 2018 campaign with Nike for example, a company that in the same year was sued by two women for creating a hostile work environment, and failing ‘to address formal sexual harassment complaints from female employees’.
Where companies can hire womxn creatives
Whether Girlgaze’s success is a symbol of progress will remain a matter of opinion. Some might deem it a paragon of prosperity and female liberation in the age of social media. For others, another reiteration of reactionary #Girlboss feminism. It’s hard to say either way, but hopefully we’ll see a future where representation of womxn is the norm, not an exception.
