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London is among the capitals of the international art world Every day and night is witness to innumerable new exhibitions, openings, events, performances and screenings Having established itself as a world centre for the exhibition and sale of contemporary art, the past decade has seen an exponential increase in its number of galleries, with commercial and non-profit spaces springing up across the city Yet the majority of these venues continue to privilege the work of male artists, begging the question of how gender equality has figured in this boom When we are moving at such a fast pace, why are women artists being left behind?   The East London Fawcett (ELF) – a branch of the Fawcett Society, the UK’s leading campaign for gender equality – recently gathered a body of statistical data in the form of the Great East London Art Audit This information was collated over the course of a year by volunteers, researchers and statisticians with the aim of providing an objective overview of the status of women artists The results were clear: of the 134 commercial galleries in London that were audited, which collectively represent 3163 artists, 31 per cent of the represented artists were women Further to this, only 5 per cent of the galleries represented an equal number of male and female artists, with 78 per cent of the programmes representing more men than women ELF also audited the 133 solo shows featured in 29 of the city’s non-profit institutions and galleries, finding that, identically, 31 per cent of these exhibitions were by female artists, while only 1 of 29 galleries presented an equal number of male and female solo shows in that time frame[1]   The continued imbalance of gender representation within the arts is an issue all too often ignored The lack of tangible urgency compares unfavourably with the 1970s, when a number of art movements in North America and Europe critiqued patriarchal power structures and explored the social and political impact of identity, gender and sexual difference During this period, statistical information gathered by activists in Los Angeles revealed that over a