The overall trend has worried the report’s authors who fear that without equal opportunities to showcase their work, the wage gap between the genders will become even further entrenched. The latest findings have sparked calls for an overhaul of state collections policies which can limit acquisition to those artists in a gallery’s collection, perpetuating historic biases.

“Overall, there has been a plateauing and backward slide across the sector in terms of gender,” Countess co-author Miranda Samuels said. “There are exceptions within every group – the MCA did not show the same kind of bias as other museums for example.

“We looked more closely at the numbers and women don’t have the same opportunities to exhibit solo shows, they are also under-represented by commercial galleries and they have fewer acquisitions by state galleries.”

Across Australia’s major museums, it found levels of female representation – defined as works exhibited or programmed – fell from 37 per cent in 2016 to 30.6 per cent in 2022, the lowest level of representation across all gallery types.

The proportion of female shows at state galleries – not including the National Gallery of Australia – remained steady at 34 per cent compared with 2019 but down on levels of 37 per cent in 2014.

The National Gallery performed well showing a high proportion of women (84 per cent) across their programs. This compares with the National Gallery of Victoria where less than one-third of featured artists in 2022 were women.

The findings come as entries opened for this year’s Archibald Portrait Prize, historically dominated by men but which for the first time in its history showcased more women painters than men last year.

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This year’s edition of the report was the first to count Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation across exhibitions, programs and acquisitions. Among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island artists, state galleries showed 26 per cent, with men outnumbering women in terms of solo shows.

The report’s findings offered little cause for celebration, said Penelope Benton, executive director of the peak lobby group the National Association for Visual Arts.

“The numbers suggest that progress in gender equity within the visual arts has stalled since the last count. Male artists continued to dominate solo shows in state galleries, commercial galleries and major museums.”

Among Australian museums, two privately funded galleries – White Rabbit Gallery, run by philanthropist Judith Neilson and which concentrates on Chinese contemporary art, and Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art – showed the least number of women artists, the study said.

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