Book Review - Gender-Based Violence in Arts and Culture: Perspectives on Education and Work

Marie Buscatto, Sari Karttunen, and Mathilde Provansal, ed. Gender-Based Violence in Arts and Culture: Perspectives on Education and Work. Open Book Publishers, 2025.

Book review by Debadrita Saha, Ashoka University

In the aftermath of the #MeToo movement in the Hollywood film industry, the origins of which can be traced to the exposure of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual crimes by women survivors in October 2017, artistic and cultural sectors across the world faced a reckoning with deeply ingrained systemic gender-based violence. Gender-Based Violence in Arts and Culture: Perspectives on Work and Education (2025) addresses this unpalatable reality through seven rigorous case studies spanning the worlds of opera, visual arts, popular music, screen industries, photography, and theatre across five countries: Finland, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. What makes this collection vital to gender studies is its staunch refusal to treat instances of gender-based violence as isolated, sporadic incidents. Instead, the editors and contributors demonstrate how such violence can be contextualised as a structural feature woven into the fabric of the worlds of art and culture.

The credentials of the editors testify to their formidable expertise on this project. Marie Buscatto, a Full Professor of Sociology at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a researcher at IDHE.S, has authored over 160 publications on gender discrimination in art worlds, including the influential Women in Jazz: Musicality, Femininity, Marginalization (Routledge, 2021). Sari Karttunen, who holds a Doctorate of Social Science (DSocSc), serves as a Senior Researcher at the Center for Cultural Policy Research CUPORE in Helsinki, specializing in the sociology of artistic occupations. Mathilde Provansal, a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Sociology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, won prestigious awards such as the Valois Prize 2020 for her doctoral dissertation on gender inequality in contemporary art, published as Artistes mais femmes: Une enquête sociologique dans l’art contemporain (ENS Éditions, 2023). The contributing authors bring deep, long-term engagements with their respective artistic sectors, ranging from gender-based violence in the Japanese popular music industry to sexual harassment in New York Theatre.

The volume is committed to examining “the continuum of sexual violence” (5), as conceptualised by Liz Kelly (1987), extending beyond criminal offences to everyday sexism often brushed off as casual. As the editors explain, “Gender-based violence refers to all forms of violence, whether verbal, physical, sexual, psychological or economic, interpersonal or institutional, committed in both public and private spheres against people due to their claimed or assigned gender identity, sexual orientation, or location in the hierarchy of masculinities” (7). This comprehensive definition, laid out in the Introduction, allows the contributors to map more accurately how seemingly ordinary practices create environments saturated with violence.

The methodological approach is explicitly feminist and politically engaged, which is refreshing. Rather than relying solely on quantitative surveys, the researchers employ ethnography, in-depth interviews, and documentary analysis, drawing upon industry statistics, often spanning multiple years. Provansal’s study of a French elite art school, for instance, draws on data collected from 2014 to 2022, including interviews with the graduates and staff, ethnographic observation of entrance exams and student-teacher dynamics, and analysis of documents produced by the collectives of art students and teachers with a feminist approach. This longitudinal commitment enables researchers to identify structural processes that produce and perpetuate violence rather than simply cataloguing incidents.

The book unfolds in three sections. The first, Part I, explores how power relations and institutional structures reproduce gender inequalities, with chapters on French opera, Japanese popular music, French art schools and contemporary art. Part II examines the representations of gender-based violence in cultural production itself, investigating the Helsinki School photography initiative and working conditions in the UK screen industries. Part III focuses on challenging gender-based violence through activism and institutional transformation, analysing New York Theatre and French electronic dance music.

A central observation emerges across all the aforementioned case studies: gender-based violence is omnipresent, yet largely silenced. In the world of French opera, Buscatto, Helbert and Roharik found that three-quarters of the respondents to the anonymous questionnaire used for gathering quantitative data (252 out of 336 participants) were victims of sexist and sexually violent actions, yet, few reported those incidents due to “fear of losing one’s job (or of not being recruited for the next one), fear of being expelled from the artistic and cultural world, fear of being disparaged publicly [...] fear of not being believed due to the strong legitimacy of the predator” (17-18, 31). Similarly, Chujo’s research on the Japanese music industry revealed that women initially minimised their experiences of sexual harassment, only acknowledging pervasive sexist practices when prompted with specific examples.

Where the book makes a genuinely new intervention is in documenting how gender-based violence shapes creative production itself. Rossi and Kartunen demonstrate how female photographers in the Helsinki School were forced to produce images in which the female body becomes objectified for photographic aesthetics. Bull’s chapter on UK screen industries reveals the contradictions faced by workers creating content about gender-based violence while simultaneously experiencing workplace harassment.

Another significant contribution is the analysis of models of resistance in these sectors. Laurent-Camena’s ethnographic study of French electronic music reveals how informal networks of women share rumours about predators, creating safer work environments despite the rarity of public accusations. Lechaux’s study of New York Theatre documents post-#MeToo inventions like intimacy coordinators and the Callisto reporting tool, while acknowledging that such legal measures fail to make a significant breakthrough in a world where arbitrary subjective artistic choices govern hiring practices.

The editors are forthright about the collection’s limitations. Despite intentions to address gender and sexual minorities as victims, “the very limited number of cases encountered” prevented a comprehensive analysis. Similarly, intersectional approaches examining how race, class, and other systems of inequality shape experiences of violence remain underdeveloped, as does the representation of artistic sectors beyond Euro-American contexts. These are crucial caveats,  and the editors’ acknowledgement of them is welcome.

This collection would be invaluable for courses in gender studies, sociology of culture, arts management, and cultural policy. The writing is accessible for undergraduates while offering sophisticated theoretical frameworks for graduate seminars. Each chapter can stand alone as a case study in research methodology, demonstrating how to conduct ethical feminist research on sensitive topics. For scholars and practitioners in artistic sectors, the book provides an essential analysis of structural barriers to gender equality that persist despite diversity initiatives. As the editors note, “breaking the code of silence has unsettled the image of artistic and cultural circles as being open, egalitarian and avant-garde” (2).

Gender-Based Violence in Arts and Culture represents a landmark contribution to understanding how artistic worlds remain haunted by violence despite their progressive rhetoric. Its rigorous methodology, international scope, and commitment to linking individual experiences with structural analysis establish new standards for this emerging field.