Women's goals must be more than parity

When men follow feminist leadership to the extent that women have followed male leadership, then sexism is on its way out. Also, until we see women getting from 40 to 60% of the financial rewards, museum and gallery exhibitions, college jobs, etc. etc. etc.., it is still tokenism. When women artists attain this, then we'll know the sexist system is over.

Hopefully women artists will not be satisfied with parity, but will continue to search for alternatives. Women's goals must be more than parity. The established patterns in the art world have proven frustrating and mostly non-rewarding to women a[s] artists since the ideal feminist stance of alternate structures is contradicted by the status quo. But such an ideal of non elitist milieus will only prove itself over a long period. While we claim the right to search for alternatives, we don't intend to let the rewards of the system remain largely in male hands.

- Artist Nancy Spero writing to art critic Lucy Lippard, February 1976, quoted in Michael Bird, Artists' Letters, London, 2019, p.104.