Arts Commission

The San Francisco Arts Commission
GENDER ANALYSIS
2000

INTRODUCTION

The San Francisco Arts Commission champions the arts in San Francisco. The Charter of the City and County of San Francisco established the department in 1932 to ensure that the arts would be incorporated into civic infrastructure for the City's residents. The Arts Commission continues to emphasize that a creative cultural environment is essential to the City's well being. Programs integrate the arts into all aspects of city life. The Arts Commission's extensive set of programs and special projects include the: Art Gallery; Civic Art Collection; Civic Design Review; Community Arts and Education including four neighborhood cultural centers; Cultural Equity Grants; Public Art; Street Artists and the annual Summer in the City pops concerts.

In April 1998, the City and County of San Francisco passed an ordinance (Chapter 12K of the Administrative Code) to implement locally the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). CEDAW provides a universal definition of discrimination against women and brings attention to a whole range of issues concerning women's human rights. It defines discrimination against women and girls as any "distinction, exclusion, or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment, or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field."1 CEDAW ensures the protection of human rights, "those rights that every human being possesses and is entitled to enjoy simply by virtue of being human."2 In San Francisco, ensuring human rights means that City government must proactively take steps to eliminate discrimination against women and girls.

The San Francisco Arts Commission has worked with the CEDAW Task Force through the Department on the Status of Women (DOSW) for a year preparing a "gender analysis" of its budget, services, and employment practices. This report summarizes the gender analysis that was performed throughout the year 2000. A number of best practices were identified, as were needed areas of improvement.

METHODOLOGY

Initially, all Arts Commission employees were trained by the CEDAW Task Force in human rights with a gender perspective. The Director of the Arts Commission insisted that all staff, rather than managers only, participate in the human rights training. This perspective recognizes that differences in life experiences based on gender often results in social, economic, political, and other inequities for women and girls. The CEDAW Task Force developed a set of guidelines to aid the department in preparing their gender analysis.3 The Arts Commission management spent considerable time and effort gathering data, then analyzing information and making recommendations with the assistance of DOSW staff.

Throughout, the gender analysis process studied numerical data and also gathered original data from several focus groups. To gather service-related data, the Arts Commission held two community focus groups, facilitated by DOSW staff.. Both female and male employees discussed various employment practices in two additional focus groups. Unfortunately, due to the lack of understanding of the Arts Commission by the consultant hired by the COSW, the staff focus groups did not yield much relevant information.

DATA COLLECTION

Using the CEDAW Task Force's gender analysis guidelines the Arts Commission collected extensive data on its services, budget and employment. With the exception of data on the numbers of employees, most data collected by the Arts Commission was not disaggregated by gender, race, or other categories.

The Arts Commission has two programs that target women and girls specifically. Additionally, in all areas the Arts Commission is extremely aware of gender, race, class, sexual orientation and disability issues and works very hard to ensure equity.

BUDGET

The Arts Commission, through its various committees, determines and approves its mission statement, strategic goals and objectives, and budget priorities on an annual basis.

Strategic Goals and Objectives

Senior staff prepares strategic goals, priorities, and objectives. Gender is sometimes a factor in service goals. For example, both cultural equity grants and the cultural centers serve women and ethnically diverse communities. Additionally, the WritersCorps project specifically targets girls. These programs are dedicated to the support of community artists and youth with an emphasis on at-risk youth, people of color, women and other underserved communities. The funding allocated to these two programs (CAE and CEG) totals $4,940,249 and represents 50% of the Arts Commission budget. Other programs at the Arts Commission also support these populations but not as an exclusive mandate. Street Artists, the Gallery and the Public Art Program all support programs that benefit the demographics investigated by the CEDAW project. The Gallery estimates that 55% of the exhibitions are of work by women artists. The public art program has an annual budget of approximately $3,000,000. The average number of contracts awarded to women artists over the last three years is 56%. In the current year 67% of the contracts were awarded to women artists. Public art projects are selected by independent panels from client departments and the professional art arena. Public Art staff also conduct neighborhood outreach meetings regarding public art projects in those communities. This is also true for the Cultural Equity grants program. The Street Artists and Gallery programs have advisory committees. Gender issues, as well as race, and specific discipline experience is always considered when selecting any panel at the Arts Commission.

There is some anecdotal evidence that the arts employ a disproportionate number of women to men. There is also a conception that men generally hold the highest positions particularly in museums, that is of director or president. There is a much lower percentage of people of color in the arts. Male artists receive much more support in number of exhibitions, grants, commissions, etc. than women do. This is also true in the number of artists and arts historians employed by universities. This is more a function of discrimination reflective generally in the culture than specifically in the arts. Many of the Arts Commission staff are concerned that the city and the culture in general does not support the arts sufficiently because it is a "women's" field. Therefore it is devalued, but again this is anecdotal. The arts in this country are considered expendable, but it's not clear whether that is a function of gender. Further data and analysis is needed, though this is not the mandate of the Arts Commission and would be more appropriately conducted by a national arts service organization or foundation.

A best practice of the Arts Commission is a recent motion passed that provided formal recognition of a long standing policy, it reads:

"It is the policy of the San Francisco Arts Commission to take all reasonable steps to ensure that the community have access to opportunities to participate in the activities of the Arts Commission. Therefore, the Arts Commission shall reach out actively to all segments of the community, without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability or medical condition, political affiliation, sexual orientation, ancestry, marital or domestic partner status, parental status, other non-merit factors or any other categories prohibited by law when it seeks employees, contractors, interns and volunteer, members of advisory committees, and member of grant, public art and other evaluative panels."

SERVICES

Data: The Arts Commission runs a variety of programs, such as:

Art Gallery - The Arts Commission Gallery showcases the work of Bay Area artists at its ground floor gallery in the War Memorial Building and City Hall galleries.

Civic Art Collection - The Civic Art Collection program is responsible for cataloguing and conserving art belonging to the city outside its museums.

Civic Design Review - The Civic Design Review Committee of architects and designers conducts a three-phase review of new and renovated civic construction projects to ensure design quality of city structures in each neighborhood. Projects include buildings, bridges, viaducts, elevated ways, approaches, gates, fences, lamps, or other structures on land belonging to the City and County of San Francisco. It also provides advice on request to private property owners in relation to the beautification of their property.

Community Arts and Education - The Community Arts & Education (CAE) Program supports cultural arts activities and arts education in San Francisco's diverse communities and promotes the revitalization of economically-disadvantaged and underserved communities through the arts. CAE is a support program that serves special constituents such as youth, the homeless, seniors, and incarcerated people. Its services include:

·Cultural Centers-CAE oversees the city's four neighborhood cultural centers. The centers offer cultural and artistic programming, such as free or low-cost classes for youth, and provide venues for performances and gallery exhibits. The cultural centers are the: Bayview Opera House Ruth Williams Memorial Theater, Center for African and African American Art and Culture, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, South of Market Cultural Center.

· Chinatown Community Arts Program-a program which provides exhibits and programs in Chinatown

·Arts Education-CAE supports arts education programs for youth in school and community settings, such as a network of Bay Area funders initiating strategic planning projects in arts education and Inside/Out, a web based and print guide to arts and arts education resources for children and teens in San Francisco.

·Granting-This program offers financial support for nonprofit, non-arts organizations serving cultural and/or geographic special constituents, specifically targeting women.

·WritersCorps-This is a community service program that improves the literacy and self-sufficiency of disadvantaged communities through the written word, specifically targeting girls and young women.

Cultural Equity Grants - Cultural Equity Grants provides support for San Francisco's multicultural landscape. Four programs offer project-oriented grants to arts organizations and individual artists to nurture and show the city's ethnic diversity (women are a specific group targeted) and variety of cultural traditions.

Public Art - Art enrichment at courthouses, libraries, City offices, the airport, and other civic structures is the result of this program, which integrates works by artists in the construction of city buildings and parks, and in other urban design contexts, such as traffic and pedestrian malls and transit corridors.

Street Artists - The Street Artists Program licenses independent artists and craftspeople to sell their own handcrafted wares in designated sidewalk vending spaces downtown and on Fisherman's Wharf. Street artists are allowed to sell every day of the year, and selection of the approximately 350 spaces is by daily lottery.

Summer in the City - The Summer in the City "pops" concert series provides the public with diverse and affordable performances by the San Francisco Symphony orchestra and a roster of guest artists in Davies Symphony Hall. The SITC series also features an annual free concert in Sharon Meadow in Golden Gate Park, as well as special free concerts at the cultural centers.

ArtHouse - A joint effort with California Lawyers for the Arts, ArtHouse provides housing facilitation assistance to artists and promotes the creation of artist live-work space. It provides consulting and referral services to artists, government agencies, architects, developers, property owners, and the general public. It also assists with the application process for rent subsidies in the current housing crisis.

Many of the Arts Commission programs state in their mission a commitment to serve the city's ethnically diverse and/or underserved communities. The Cultural Equity Grants program focuses on four areas, one of which is assisting underserved communities, with women being included as a large part of that group. The Arts Commission does not collect data on grantees by gender or race, though women are a targeted group for both individual artist grants and organizations.

Many of the Arts Commission programs do not have a primary focus on gender diversity. Where, however, gender-specific data did exist, such as the Slide Registry program and the Public Art program, more than 50% of those served were women. Many of the community partners identified by the service programs also did not indicate a focus on serving women. A few did focus on elders, ethnic groups, and many on youth. The WritersCorps program targets girls working with sites such as Girl's After School Academy and Center for Young Women's Development.

Evaluation measures

The Gallery program has a Gallery Advisory Board, a Visual Arts Committee, and City Hall staff committee--all of whom make decisions about the program and displays. Two of these groups have an equitable representation of women and reported a clear effort to ensure diversity "by striving to have an equitable representation of people of color or male/female artists."

The Arts Commission hired outside consultants to evaluate a number of the youth education programs. This evaluation did not consider gender. The report, however, did provide some excellent information on the success of the programs. Teachers pointed to the "arts program" being integrated into subject areas such as math and science. "(It) helped explore African and Asian art and culture...regular multicultural music and dance and theatre, help students produce books...and connected with social students and literacy."

Some teachers for the program mentioned it as being particularly beneficial to ESL students--others referred to ideas on Native American culture traditions and help with special education students. Another part of the youth education programs, the writing program, did not maintain data on the youth by sex, but it did demonstrate its success at improving writing skills and learning attitude. However, several of the sites are girls only. Youth programs also attempt to measure cultural equity with a consideration of ethnicity - these programs could integrate gender into the evaluation process.

The Street Artists Program

Another community focus group concentrated on the Street Artist program. The Street Artists Program is a model program that presents some best practices of the Arts Commission. The Street Artists program provides economic opportunities for women from diverse backgrounds, including women with disabilities and those supporting families. Participants describe the Street Artists Program as an opportunity for women to run their own lives, be validated, support themselves and their families, choose when they want to work, and what they want to create artistically. It is described as a program that includes-and is an "equalizer" of-very diverse people, including people from all over the world, and people with disabilities. Some examples include:

· One woman with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) has financially liberated herself from her husband and found a way to support herself that allows her to work on what she is interested in. The woman stated, "This is the most ADD-friendly program you could possibly have. If I won the Lottery, I would be [selling my art] the next day, if it wasn't raining."

· One Chinese woman who had emigrated from China where she had to work from before daybreak until late at night felt the Street Artist program was "heaven" because as an artist, she could do what she wanted, as long as she didn't break any laws.

· Another woman when asked of her experiences with the program responded, "The experience of being a woman-owned business working with the Arts Commission has been nothing but positive."

One suggestion for improving the lottery system that is used to select Street Artists locations was made regarding a woman with children and no car. She said that the time to conduct the lottery each morning should be scheduled to accommodate women with children who are not able to be there by 9 am.

EMPLOYMENT

Data

· The Arts Commission employs thirty staff most of who are full time.

· 81.25% of the staff are female.

· 34.38% of the staff are people of color. When positions are vacated, strong efforts are made by the staff to guarantee the continuation of the positions, abiding by Affirmative Action guidelines in filling those positions. Black males and females, as well as Hispanics and Filipinos are underrepresented in each category.

· 60% of managers are women

· 80% of managers are white

· There was no data available on age, sexual orientation, family status, disability, or other factors.

BEST PRACTICES:

The Arts Commission considers itself to be one of the most progressive departments in the city. The department has always maintained a commitment to diversity and equity in all of its programs and operations. We work very closely with the Human Rights Commission to ensure that all of our artist commissions and contracts, at a minimum, adhere to all the city's regulations.

Our art enrichment and grant panels also emphasize the diversity of participants in regards to race, gender and arts discipline. We hold numerous community meetings to ensure that the community has input into our programs especially when we place art in particular neighborhoods. We work tirelessly in this regard for consensus among all the interested parties. Our advisory committee for our Street Artists and Gallery programs again emphasize diversity. Our staff work/life policies are extremely liberal and it has been noted by staff that these policies account for the department's high retention rate. The Arts Commission exceeds the city's guidelines when advertising positions in an attempt to reach the most diverse job pool possible. The Arts Commission budget is reviewed annually in several public hearings and all documents are available for public view. The department maintains an extensive web site that provides access to all committee hearings with agendas and minutes. Additionally, all job, artist commissions and exhibit, and grant opportunities are posted on the web site, as well as advertised in extensive mailings and print ads. We provide annual reports for the commission as well as several of our programs.

Employment and Mentoring:

There is extremely low turnover in upper level Arts Commission positions. The most turnover occurs at entry-level positions, which are considered an opportunity to enter the field and move up. The entry-level positions and internships, as well as opportunities for volunteers enable the Arts Commission to outreach to people of color who are the most underserved group in the arts. Staff serving in entry-level positions and internships have consistently gone onto higher level positions both in the arts and the public sector.

The Cultural Center's staffs are largely people of color, but no specific data has been collected.

The Arts Commissions exceeds the requirements of DHR in advertising our positions. We regularly advertise on several web based job services, arts and funding publications, send out mailings to approximately 1000 artists and arts professionals in the Bay Area, as well as advertise positions in community newspapers and alternative publications to reach a broad cross section of the public.

Classification Study:

The Arts Commission has undertaken a classification study for all the positions in the department. Many of the positions haven't been evaluated for over twenty years. DHR is working with the Arts Commission to evaluate these positions by comparing them to current management civil service positions within the city, as well as gathering data of similar positions at other departments of cultural affairs in San Jose, LA, NYC, Seattle, etc. Additional curator positions in museums are also being surveyed. Early recommendations from DHR find that many of the positions should be upgraded which will result in salary increases for most of the staff.

Flexible Work Schedules:

The Arts Commission provides a variety of flexible work options currently to a number of employees. These schedules are accommodated on a case by case basis. Additionally the department offers a flexible start time for all employees. Employees may begin their workday anytime between 8 am and 9:30 am. They are then responsible for working eight hours exclusive of lunch. Two employee have opted for a reduced schedule to 4 days work so that they can spend more time with their children. The department is sympathetic to working parents and provides flexibility for staff to pick up children, attend teacher conferences, etc. during the workday. Telecommuting is on an as-needed basis. There is no official job sharing, though staff often collaborate on the same project. The department is considering compressed work week options, such as 4, 10-hour days per week or 80 hours within 9 days with a day off every other week. Several staff have expressed an interest but no action has yet been taken.

The Arts Commission cultivates a work culture of trust and professionalism, which is greatly appreciated by the staff. This culture along with the flexibility provided results in extremely low turnover and a high degree of professionalism. The Director, Deputy Director and Arts Commission value and empower the staff. In a staff focus group an employee stated in regards to the department's flexibility, "It's worth more than money." Employees expressed both satisfaction and frustration with the City's childcare options. One employee is able to visit her child twice a day. Another employee has been on the waiting list for almost two years and is not likely to get her child into the City Hall day care program. The costs are extremely high.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

1) The Arts Commission will make an effort to evaluate all its programs, services and operations which include gender as one of the focuses. We will consider hiring a consultant to help us establish a meaningful evaluation process as well as a survey tool for each of our programs. The community will be involved in this evaluation process.

2) The Arts Commission will continue its practice of offering staff flexibility and consider offering more options such as job sharing, part-time (most staff are full-time), compressed work week; formal telecommuting where feasible, and other work-life resources (most likely in conjunction with other departments) such as childcare and elder information or referrals, etc.

3) The CEDAW task force should take a leadership role in recommending City-wide policies regarding gender equity, as well as employment flexibility policies.

4) The department will also look into the issue of the Street Artist lottery and the impact on parents.

5) The department will assess the need to initiate a strategic planning process.

1 See City and County of San Francisco, The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women Ordinance (hereinafter "San Francisco CEDAW Ordinance"), Ordinance No. 128-98 (Approved April 13, 1998), Administrative Code, Chapter 12K. Full text is available at {C}{cke_protected_2) http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/cosw.

2 Women's Human Rights Step By Step, Women, Law & Development International, Human Rights Watch, Women's Rights Project, 1997, Washington, D.C., Page 8.

3 Guidelines are available at www.cosw/cedaw.