Since 2007, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has coordinated emancipation policies for women and the LGBTQIA+ community, focusing on employment, combating violence, and equal rights. The 2017-2021 coalition agreement included the Rainbow Agreement, which set measures to combat discrimination, including an amendment to Article 1 of the Constitution prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and disability. It also aimed to reduce gender registration without a specific goal and improve the position of LGBTQIA+ individuals in education. In 2019, the Equal Treatment Act was amended to explicitly protect transgender and intersex people from discrimination.
In the OCW agenda against discrimination and racism (2022), the ministry includes gender within broader emancipation policy. The Emancipation Directorate, under the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, promotes equal rights, opportunities, freedoms, and responsibilities regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
The ambitions regarding emancipation are further elaborated in the Emancipation Memorandum (“Emancipatienota”). The 2022–2025 emancipation policy memorandum, which was drafted under Robbert Dijkgraaf, opens with a vision stating that while all individuals are legally equal, in practice not everyone has the same opportunities or feels safe to be themselves. It sets out the government’s approach to advancing the rights and equality of women and LGBTQIA+ people. Emancipation is presented not as a standalone goal, but as an integral part of broader government policy. The emancipation memorandum addresses a broad range of emancipation-related themes (such as employment, safety, education, healthcare, equal treatment, and the international context) but contains no separate section on the cultural sector in relation to gender equality.
In the same 2025 report mentioned before in chapter 2.5.1, OCW published numbers on the representation of gender in employees, board members and supervisors, and advisors within Dutch cultural institutions:
- In 2023, 63 percent of employees in subsidized cultural institutions were women, compared to 59 percent in 2017.
- In 2023, 51 percent of board members and supervisors of subsidized cultural institutions were women, compared to 40 percent in 2017.
- In 2023, 56 percent of advisory committee members of funding bodies were women, compared to 46 percent in 2017.
Altogether, the study shows an increase in the representation of women in different roles within Dutch subsidized cultural institutions between 2017 and 2023. It is important to mention again that while the figures presented here provide some insight into the representation of gender (albeit in a narrow sense) within cultural organizations, this does not necessarily indicate that these organizations are inclusive. Several studies show that gender inequality, differentiation, and discrimination remain persistent issues in the cultural sector (see chapter 8 on the page Diversity, inclusion and equality on the Culture Monitor).
There are various initiatives in the cultural and media sector aimed at raising awareness of gender inequality. For example, there is the Manifesto on Gender Equality and Intersectionality in the Art World (“Gendergelijkheid en intersectionaliteit in de kunstwereld”), which brings together intentions, recommendations, and concrete objectives regarding gender equality and intersectional representation. An example of recent research on gender in the Dutch media sector is Monitor Representation 2023, the third study on representation in non-fiction television carried out by the Dutch Media Authority (Commissariaat voor de media). Commissioned by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and conducted in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam, the study provides data to inform public debate on representation, diversity, and gender in the media.
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