Women in Music: Exploring the Experiences of Women Musicians in a Male-Dominated Field
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Authors
Bennett, Krysta
Issue Date
2024-04-04
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Abstract
A large body of research examines the experiences of women within male-dominated occupations such as STEM fields
(Gaines 2017, Martin & Barnard 2013). A smaller body of work focuses on women within another male-dominated space, that of music (Scharff 2018, Bull 2019). This research aims to enhance our understanding of women musicians' experiences of navigating male-dominated spaces, and the subtle or overt ways that sexism may impact their experiences. While women have been a part of the music field since the beginning, they are underrepresented in professional music. This begins as students, with young women, pushed towards what are considered “feminine” instruments and pushed away from more masculine instruments (Eros 2008). When females get to college they often are music majors. Nationally, 62% percent of the Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees awarded in 2015 were women, and approximately 70% of our music majors at Alma are female. However, female music majors are almost always pushed toward lower education. Women only account for 10.7% of college instructors in secondary music education (Gould 1992). We barely see women instrumentalists or conductors in orchestras, and rarely are female compositions included in the repertoire. Only 11.75% of scheduled orchestra concerts last year included a composition by women and out of the almost 15,000 pieces performed, 747 were women compositions (Laccio 2021). The purpose of this study is to examine the deficit of women in the professional music industry within the context of Alma. I’ll also talk about how it is perpetuated in society and affects students and professionals today — focusing on how the structures of professional music are built around men and the discrimination that is felt by music professionals in everyday life due to these structures. This project joins a vast body of work that examines the experiences of underrepresented populations within different fields, often exposed to bias or discrimination or treated as a “token” representative of their identity group (Blickenstaff 2005). This project applies that lens to the context of women musicians at two key levels: as students pursuing careers within the music field, and as women professionally employed as musicians now.