The liability of gender? Constraints and enablers of foreign market entry for female artists

JungYun Han (), Henrich R. Greve () and Andrew Shipilov ()
Additional contact information
JungYun Han: National Taiwan University
Henrich R. Greve: INSEAD
Andrew Shipilov: INSEAD, Boulevard de Constance

Journal of International Business Studies, 2025, vol. 56, issue 8, No 2, 989 pages

Abstract: Abstract Cultural industries help build creativity-based economies and stimulate worldwide cultural interchanges, but this process faces constraints. One such constraint is unequal treatment of genders. When female artists export cultural products, they face a “liability of gender”, defined as gender specific difficulties in overcoming the liability of foreignness. Both audiences’ gendered expectations and artists’ lack of information about foreign markets will lower women artists’ probability of successfully exporting cultural products, relative to their male counterparts. Differences in education and social network connections strengthen this effect. To investigate this relation and discover how it can be counteracted, we study Korean artists from 2000 to 2015. We document that female artists have more difficulty exhibiting in foreign galleries than males, yet these negative effects can be mitigated by elite education and by participation in art residency programs. Residency programs help female artists to develop networks from their interactions with female peers, but these benefits erode quickly relative to the benefits of education. These findings help us understand how to create a level playing field across genders in worldwide cultural exchanges and suggest that network building institutions such as the art residency programs can effectively reduce gender inequality.

Keywords: Cultural industry; Foreign market entry; Network relations theory; Human capital; Gender; Panel data analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41267-023-00680-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jintbs:v:56:y:2025:i:8:d:10.1057_s41267-023-00680-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/41267/PS2

DOI: 10.1057/s41267-023-00680-5

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Business Studies is currently edited by John Cantwell

More articles in Journal of International Business Studies from Palgrave Macmillan, Academy of International Business
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().