Prevalence and evolution of the gender gap in French cultural practices ; Prégnance et évolution du « gender gap » dans les pratiques culturelles des Français(e)s

Abstract

Co-direction du projet : Isabelle Charpentier ; Patrick Lehingue ; avec Eric Darras et E. PierruRapport intermédiaire ; Democratisation, the stated objective of French cultural policies since the end of the Second World War, is the recurrent subject of many passionate debates. The observation of cultural practices, which have been the subject of regular statistical measurements in France since 1973, thanks to the surveys on the cultural practices of the French under the aegis of the Department of Studies and Forecasting of the French Ministry of Culture, attests to a continuous increase in consumption of an intellectual and artistic nature. However, these figures should not mask the persistence of major social divisions and, consequently, the very relative nature of the democratisation that has taken place, in particular for the most distinctive regular cultural practices.Beyond simply relating the different cultural practices measured, their intensity and frequency, to the social properties of the practitioners, this work questions the meaning of these links, thus combining an approach in terms of the sociology of cultural consumption and socio-cultural inequalities in access to practices and products, with the concerns and hypotheses of reception studies. Indeed, in the wake of Anglo-Saxon Cultural Studies, but also of the 'intuitions' of the French sociologists Claude Grignon and Jean-Claude Passeron, the hypothesis was formulated that the relationship between the supply of cultural products (especially those with a strong cultivated symbolism) and the structuring of the tastes, expectations and practices of the public is neither uniform, nor mechanical, nor exclusive. The social effects linked to the cultural offer - in its multiple forms - are a function of the levels of exposure of the different audiences. However, these audiences appear to be very diversely and selectively exposed to this offer, and very unequally interested in it, particularly in working-class areas and, more generally, among those most ...