This dissertation explores the gendered division of childcare in terms of concepts of the father and examines how these concepts have impacted on the production of women artists in the history of western art. The survey is restricted to western culture and is subdivided, according to changes in concepts of the father, into roughly three periods: the era of the pre-modern father, the era of the modern ideology regarding the mother, and the postmodern era, in which a new concept of the father was articulated. / Thesis (M.A.F.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2003.