I recently learned that there are fewer women (4.1%) who are CEO’s of large US companies than there are men named John (5.3%).

This year's body of work explores the transition of gender roles in the workplace and the relationship between that and everyday, banal objects and tasks.​

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We have come a long way from that of, say, 50 years ago, when it would be the assumed role of the female, probably wife, to offer houseguests a cup of tea. That assumption is much less true today; it could very easily be anybody who is hosting, male or female, to offer guests a drink.

But move that situation to a corporate office and swap the houseguests for a client, and you can assume a female assistant or colleague would be the one to offer a drink; while the CEO may well be named John. ​I am using teabags as a way to explore the banality and the everyday and ingrained nature of these gestures.

 

It is easy to be blind to the assumed role of genders when it is so normal to offer somebody something to drink. I am lucky in my own workplace that males and females are treated equally. However, in talking about my work with people around me, I hear time and time again that they agree with the statement that the women in the workplace end up doing the dishes, cleaning communal areas or making cups of tea.

 

It isn't part of their job description, but it is an ingrained notion that these tasks are generally done by females of the workplace. I find it immensely interesting to learn about and to question these conventional norms.This body of work is both a celebration of the distance we have come, but also it is an urge to continue in the movement toward equality.