As artists in the late 1960s and early 1970s started to produce explicitly feminist works, critics and historians of the various arts began to examine a previously unnoticed gender bias in the Western artistic tradition. Feminists discern this bias on two levels.

First, feminist critics charge that canonical artworks represent women and men in markedly different ways, a difference evident in the organization and scenarios of the works themselves. Whereas men are typically portrayed as strong, active, heroic, and playing important historical roles, women are nearly always shown as weak, inert, and vulnerable; in domestic or nurturing roles; identified with nature; and as sexually available for men's needs. This is perhaps most evident in the visual arts where representations of passive, anonymous, and vulnerable female nudes dominate many historical periods. Drawing on semiotics, psychoanalysis, and Marxist theory, feminists sought to expose and...