The premise of the documentary “;Who Does She Think She Is?”; isn't new. Anyone who was around during the women's rights movement of the 1970s and the Guerilla Grrl movement of the mid-1980s is well aware of the fight to lift women from their second-class status in society. But while much has changed in the worlds of business and education, those viewing the film might be surprised by how little has changed for the female artist over the past 40 years.

The film offers a starting point for a much-needed conversation on why this might be the case, although in Hawaii there doesn't appear to be such a great imbalance. Juliette May Fraser, Madge Tennent and Toshiko Takaezu command as much respect as Jean Charlot, Isami Doi and John Young, a balance that has continued to today's generation of artists.

So it might be surprising to learn, as director Pamela Boll and editor/co-director Nancy Kennedy point out in interviews with artists and educators, that on a national scale between 2000 and 2004, the number of solo exhibitions featuring female artists represented only 11 percent of shows at the Guggenheim, 4 percent at the Museum of Modern Art, 2 percent at the Tate Modern and 2 percent at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Meanwhile, though women represent 80 percent of students enrolled in art programs, 70 percent to 80 percent of artists represented in galleries and museums are men.

The discrepancy is depressing for the female artists interviewed in the film, who face several obstacles in pursuit of art, starting with the question, Who does she think she is ... to step out of the box that society has created for her?

It's bad enough that society still expects women to choose family or nurturing professions over high-profile careers, but families also expect women to put aside their needs for the sake of the household, something that is not generally asked of men.

Maya Torres, an artist living in Carson, N.M., said, “;I was really torn because I wanted to dedicate myself to my kids, and yet I wanted to be in the studio. I had lots of people telling me that I was being selfish.”;

Many of the artists featured in the documentary were divorced; among them was the artist Mayumi Oda, who now makes her home on the Big Island, where she hosts retreats for aspiring goddesses. In conjunction with the film's Hawaii screenings, Oda's original paintings and serigraphs are being shown with the work of photographer Lani Yamasaki in an exhibition, “;Mauka Makai: Mayumi Oda & Lani Yamasaki,”; at Robyn Buntin of Honolulu through Dec. 20.

In the film, Oda, who grew up in Japan, says she was constantly punished by her grandfather for her independent streak. She married an American filmmaker, in part to escape her family, and ended up in this country at the height of the women's movement. From that point her paintings of strong, fiery goddesses could not be separated from her political activism.

In video footage of Oda in 1982, she said of her work, “;We all have to decide we are the goddesses because nobody else will tell you that you are goddess. Probably it is an illusion, but if I have an illusion, I want to have a good one.”;

Today, having reached a point where she says she's gotten art out of her system, Oda has become a caretaker to the land as an organic farmer and an author who hosts creativity and self-realization workshops at Ginger Hill Farm.

GODDESS FIGURES and allusions to motherhood and childbirth are constant themes in the women's art featured, which provides one reason female artists are not taken seriously in the upper echelons of the art world. There, most of the wealthy patrons and museum directors are men who can't relate to women's issues, thus relegating women's art to its own ghetto.

Courtney Martin, a professor of gender studies at Hunter College, points out that so-called women's issues are also humanity issues involving 52 percent of the population.

“;It affects everything,”; she said. “;Women are valued when they enter a male-structured workplace, but they aren't valued when they're expressing themselves, when they're creating art or when they're caregiving. We pay lip service to caring deeply about artists and mothers, but we don't support them.”;

Artist Layne Redmond, a master frame drummer, points out that women were revered in most cultures and that it was only with the rise of Christian and Muslim culture promoting one powerful god that the goddesses disappeared. As a result, “;Women were excluded from educational institutions, the worlds of art and creativity,”; Martin said.

And that is unfortunate, the result being, the “;less Nobel prize winners, the less contributors to society, the less philosophers and poets you're going to have,”; said Leonard Shlain, noted lecturer, surgeon and author of “;The Alphabet vs. the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image.”;

“;If you have the urge to be creative, it's imperative that you express it. The artist plays a very important role in our society in that it allows the rest of us to interpret things and understand things that we wouldn't ordinarily get,”; he said. “;Societies keeping women down are not working.”;