While many speculate on how Gen Z taste will shape the art market of the future, a shift in the composition of collectors is already underway. Female buyers are making their mark and while their taste is impossible to generalize, trends are coming through that point to a different approach including, at this stage, a bias towards female artists.

Women are increasingly part of the wealth universe. Paul Donovan, the chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, says that his bank’s share of female clients has risen to about 45% over the past decade. Some of this is due to the ‘sideways inheritance’ from their late husbands, while ‘the increased participation of women in the workforce’ has boosted their spending power.

The pattern is expected to continue. The latest Art Basel & UBS Global Survey of Collecting finds that ‘women now control over a third of global wealth, a figure set to rise.’ In 2024, the report finds, female average spend on art and antiques was USD 519,960, 46% more than men.

At the same time, female artists are beginning to make their presence felt, though this is often reliant on the available supply. Improvements were found in last year’s Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report which reported that, while still in the minority, the proportion of sales of female artists for dealers had grown substantially, if gradually, since 2018 – from 23% to 31%. For dealers in the primary market, the equivalent increase was from 32% to 42%.

While the economic mantra is that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, there are plenty of signs that female buyers lean towards their own gender when it comes to artists. ‘It is inevitable, as in other areas, that people come with biases about things that they care about,’ Donovan says. The Survey of Collecting finds that female collectors had a higher share of works by female artists in their collections at 49%, well above the average for male collectors at 40%.

Some collectors are deliberate in their focus, though others say it can be a case of happenstance. ‘I want to go beyond generations, genders, any labels really,’ says the London-based, Chinese collector and philanthropist Yan Du, who recently opened a project space in Bedford Square and whose personal collection numbers more than 800 works.

She acknowledges, though, that when she started out more than a decade ago, she was drawn to the ‘personal stories and roots’ of female artists. ‘There are so many different perspectives of females and maybe I can feel more connections with those voices,’ Yan says. She adds, though, that ‘male artists sometimes exhibit a kind of feminine energy.’ Female artists in her collection include Louise Bourgeois, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Issy Wood, while Yan reveals that the oldest work is by Dutch Golden Age artist Anna Ruysch (1666–1754).

When it comes to supply, the growing number of powerful female gallerists demonstrate a similar tendency to take on more artists of their own gender. This is in part a response to the fact that ‘previously underrepresented artists are a gap that museums are very consciously trying to fill,’ says Roshini Vadehra, the director of New Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery. She notes the regional distinction that ‘India is a country where the art world is dominated by women,’ adding that when her father, Arun Vadehra, founded the gallery in 1987 he was unusual (albeit he ran it after a career in construction).

Nonetheless, she says, ‘a lot of the artists [in India] are men’ and indeed her father’s successful charges included M.F. Husain and S.H. Raza – though with the notable exception of Arpita Singh, who recently had a solo show at London’s Serpentine. Vadehra says she has since added more South Asian female artists to the mix, of all generations, including the rising star New Delhi photographer Gauri Gill.

The gallery’s collector base is changing too, she says, with women more able to make their own decisions, rather than going through their husbands. ‘A lot also say that they are more focused on women artists. Everyone wants to tell a story with their art, and this is an easy way to do so,’ she says.

When it comes to broader investment decisions, UBS’s Donovan finds that women have a different attitude to risk to their male counterparts. On the face of it, statistics show that women generally take more chances, something that is borne out in their art buying too. The Survey of Global Collecting finds that ‘women were much more likely to report buying unknown artists frequently or often’ (55% versus 44% of men). Donovan qualifies this with the finding that ‘women seem to make their decisions less emotionally and after doing research… so that it isn’t in fact as risky [in their minds].’

Yan Du is among those who put this into practice. She says that ‘for me, collecting is a serious business and not just a hobby.’ To this end, she has a full-time, professional team around her who ‘conduct thorough research and valuation.’

The report finds too that more women opt for ‘social motivations’ as a reason to collect, versus the ‘elitism and exclusivity’ that appeal to men. This approach is noted by Annya Sand, a multimedia artist who has run the nonprofit Women Artists’ Art Week in London since 2022. ‘Female collectors in particular tend to be more open to emerging artists and socially conscious collecting,’ she says. ‘While investment is still in their sights, they have a strong focus on connection and meaning.’ This is likely one reason behind the survey’s finding that female collectors show a marked preference for artist studio exhibitions, visiting an average of ten such events in 2025, versus the six by men (who generally went out less).

Meanwhile, there is evidence that women make very successful collectors when it comes to investment. Notable recent collections at auction include Pauline Karpidas’s well-received trove of Surrealism and design, from where highlights included a Console Végétale (2011) by François-Xavier Lalanne, which Karpidas had bought from his widow (and collaborator) Claude Lalanne. This sold last year for GBP 2 million (including fees), against an estimate of GBP 180,000–250,000. Another François-Xavier Lalanne work – his copper hippopotamus-shaped bar of 1976 – later made a record for the artist, and for any design piece, at auction when it sold for USD 31.4 million (estimate USD 7–10 million). Again, this had belonged to a female collector, the Texas-based, French-born heiress Anne Schlumberger, who had bought the work outside of the market’s traditional structures, namely directly from the artist, in 1977.

Their focus beyond paintings is borne out in more recent statistics. The Survey of Global Collecting finds that within the fine art universe, 64% of female high-net-worth collectors bought paintings between 2024 and 2025 versus 70% of male buyers. Digital art, photography, and installations were among the categories where the female spend was higher. When collectibles are added to the mix, women’s average spend on design was at USD 45,330, versus USD 36,650 for men, and these buyers also paid more for handbags and, perhaps more surprisingly, in the classic cars, boats, and jets category.

How these dynamics play out is of course unknown, but Donovan believes that it all points to a ‘shifting narrative’ and that ‘a certain momentum must come from this.’ Sand finds that the collector gender gap is narrowing, believing that the market as a whole is becoming more ‘diverse.’ She says her goal is ‘to engage all collectors’ so that ‘men feel confident when investing in work by female artists too.’ Ultimately, she says, it is ‘about opening doors for female artists and inviting everyone to be part of that conversation.’