Panel discussion on Empowering Women in the Creative Industries (A/58 side event)

On the margins of the WIPO Assemblies, WIPO’s Human Resources Development Division and the Copyright and Creative Industries Sector organized a lunchtime event entitled Empowering Women in the Creative Industries.

While women and men are both tremendously creative, women remain under-represented in many creative industries. They often face unequal treatment and suffer from biases. Available information suggests that women lag behind their male counterparts in the creative industries with many creative professions being dominated by men. For instance, the United Nations reports that just 7 percent of the world’s film directors and 20 percent of screenwriters are female. Similarly, a study of the global art market has shown that works by women artists fetch less at auction than those by men.

Gender disparities are also harder to measure in relation to authors of creative works such as books, music and films, because the IP rights that protect those works – copyright and related rights – generally arise automatically and do not need to be registered with a central authority. That makes it difficult to track use of such rights based on registrations.

The panel addressed the following questions:

• How do we best empower women in the creative industries?
• How do we close the gender gaps?
• How does the creative sector compare with other sectors as a level playing field for women?

Find out more...