Half the Sky talks up the need for more female artists in public spaces

Luise Guest focuses on the works and lives of Chinese women artists in her new book.[Photo provided to China Daily]

But after her interviews with women artists in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Xi'an, she found such perceptions to be incorrect.

In fact, most female artists were fighting family pressure to give more time to their work. Many women she talked to were also married to other artists.

"In China, I see lots of artist couples. Maybe, male artists can better understand their spouses," Guest says.

Of the 32 female artists featured in her book, a few are internationally known, such as Cao Fei, whose video work Second Life has been shown in many galleries and museums across the world since 2007. Others are successful in China.

But the problem is that they don't get the same level of exposure as male artists do, Guest says.

She says people in the West have a "knowledge gap" about China's female artists.

An Australian or American might even know the name of an artist or two, when asked about China's contemporary art, but it would most likely be male, like Zhang Xiaogang or Fang Lijun, Guest says.

"To find them (women artists) was not an issue. The problem was how to include more women in my book, as I found more and more interesting women when I had the conversations," Guest says of the writing process.