Gender inequality in the music industry

Figures for Australasia show that women only account for 21%–24% of people working in music. Elsewhere, in many cases the numbers are even lower.

How can this change? Please discuss.

An example from one of the smaller 'music industries' – last year the multi-talented Coco Solid posted some articles and interviews about the problems in New Zealand:

- https://thespinoff.co.nz/music/16-12-2016/frequencies-and-equalizers

- https://thespinoff.co.nz/music/27-02-2017/equalise-my-vocals-people-want-a-reward-for-ticking-the-boxes-thats-not-going-to-cut-it-thats-not-equality

This has led to public events and discussion, and industry body APRA seems to have responded – announcing targets for greater female membership, and having conspicuously more female nominees for awards. But such measures can only do so much, and the country is still far from being any beacon of equality.

BTW also, what music press writes regularly about this apart from Bitch Media? Thx in adv

How can this change?

employ more women

The APRA membership imbalance is among musicians and songwriters too, not just "employees" in the usual sense.

Like, that's the kind of thing Coco Solid talks about in the link above:

Somehow I started in an all-girl punk rap band called The Pussies, fresh out of high school in relatively uptight Auckland, which is to say I started off with a bang.

It was a politicised joke, but I knew every time I wrote a song that maybe there was more to it for me. It was also my first taste of some seriously sexist bullshit, as you might expect. Perhaps the mental health that music offers me versus the mental health music takes away will always hold unfortunate hands, although the optimist in me hopes not.

I’ve always quietly known, no matter how insufferable I found the music industry to women, I can never get out of the racket completely. I am very Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon when it comes to this shit. Unfortunately, I’m invested. I’ve finally caved and accepted musicianship is just part of the deal and I’ll probably be resentfully putting on headphones when I’m 80, maybe testing an undeveloped banger in an elderly friend’s hovercraft in a carpark somewhere.

I converted my broom closet into a vocal booth recently you see, which is the Aotearoa way of saying I’ve started on my next record. Bands and steady collabs aside, it’s been five years since my last solo Coco Solid project and a couple of people have asked me why it’s been so long. I still think back to myself in my very first vocal booth recording, having fallen deep into the valley of mega-thrills but also feeling at home.

Someone in the studio said to me that day that I was as good as a guy. It was a strange backhanded compliment I couldn’t shake off. Back then I didn’t know music – something I loved with my entire being – had such a notorious underbelly. I didn’t know music would litter a big chunk of my adulthood with insincerity, predators, narcissists, reductive critique, insulting appraisals, a steady carousel of sexist bros and a casual array of power and trust abusers. But hey, let’s just say I know now. It’s buzzy that I still have the psychic strength to be making it in all honesty, outlasting a lot of the corny characters who almost put me off (and there were a lot). Maybe that’s enough of a vague but loaded explanation as to why it’s taken me so long to make another record. (TheSpinoff.co.nz)

Starting out with an annoying artschool joke band probably wasn't best practise tbh

^ And stuff like that

JFC at 2017!

https://s26.postimg.cc/4z2qycbl5/Percent_headline_festival_acts_by_gender.png

Truly it was a different time.

Maybe those festivals, the biggest commercial ones in the UK, are always likely to be more conservative. (They didn't even include Shiiine On...)

But this week, a group of festivals announced they'll aim for a 50-50 gender split:

- https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/bbc-proms-among-45-festivals-committing-to-5050-gender-balance-36643652.html

Mostly 'arty' ones - or events run by public media, like the BBC Introducing stages at festivals. Outside of Britain, those who've signed up include Borealis and by:Larm (Norway), Canadian Music Week, Trondheim Calling (Norway), Waves Vienna (Austria), Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Festival (France) and Katowice JazzArt Festival (Poland).

The Proms, too. It's a bit bizarre that classical music would lead the war against the patriarchy, but not so surprising. The 50% balance for performers and commissions won't be a big stretch for the Proms. Making it 50-50 for all composers they play (which isn't planned) would be a really major change.

Stats above are from a study of 10 years of bad festivals:

- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-40273193

Incidentally, they also worked out the exact speed at which Paul McCartney is ageing:

https://s26.postimg.cc/9kyv6p4u1/How_Glastonbury_headliners_have_been_getting_older.png

- https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/music-non-binary-transgender-musicians

"North Carolina’s Moogfest announced its 2018 lineup which will feature exclusively female, trans, and non-binary musicians. One Voice Mixed Chorus in St. Paul will host the Transgender Voices Festival in April, a gathering designed to 'offer a space for transgender and gender nonconforming (GNC) singers across musical genres and cultures to explore our voices and identities'"

Trans and non-binary musicians are part of the European festivals' aim for more gender equality, but, um... https://keychange.eu/about-us/. Sasha Geffen wrote about the other questions raised by the pledge after the announcement in February.