14
Addressing Gender Equality in Music
Production
Current Challenges, Opportunities for
Change, and Recommendations
Jude Brereton, Helena Daffern, Kat Young,
and Michael Lovedee-Turner
INTRODUCTION
Although music production encompasses a broad selection of disciplines,
job roles, practices, and methodologies, it is arguably one of the least
gender-diverse occupations. The ratio of male to female music producers
is estimated to be 47 to 1 (Smith et al. 2019).
The purpose of this chapter, however, is not to provide a detailed analysis
of gender representation in music production, nor a comprehensive discus-
sion of where biases have been formed or perpetuated. Whilst we will touch
on the factors which contribute to the current state of the industry’s bias,
we will predominantly explore the potential for changing the landscape of
gender representation in music production by capitalizing on current posi-
tive work in the sector. We will also present a number of recommendations
to make a rapid, significant, and sustainable change for the better.
There still prevails a stereotypical view of the Music Producer as a lone
practitioner, an audio engineer controlling huge amounts of complicated-
looking technology, with buttons, sliders, LED displays, and many cables.
Indeed, this stereotype is historically heavily gendered and bound together
with notions of male dominance in technological expertise, control, and cre-
ativity. Wolfe (2019) provides a wider exploration of gendering in the music
industry and the implications of the patriarchal framework this creates.
A web-based image search on the term Music Producer returns hundreds
of photos in which the technology (mixing desk, multiple loudspeakers,
PC/laptop screens, keyboard) are front and center under the control of a
sole (male) audio engineer. Very few images depict people working in a
team, and even fewer show obviously female faces. Those that do include
female producers/engineers are usually found on specialist websites aimed
at encouraging women into audio engineering.
Despite such pervasive, narrow stereotypical images, music production
involves much more than studio recording and requires a wide range of
technical, artistic, and social skills. Ian Shepherd (2009) suggests that music
219
Jude Brereton, et al.
220
producers embody a variety of different skill sets and identifies seven types
of music producer, including engineer, artist, musician, and mentor.
With this in mind, we use the term music production in this chapter to
span a wide variety of roles within a number of disciplines such as audio
engineering, creative music technology, sound recording, electronic music
composition, and game audio as well as audio for emerging immersive
technologies (e.g. virtual and augmented reality). As such music produc-
tion covers a broad range of activities all of which combine creativity
and technology, arts and engineering; “from studio based roles, to digital
processing, composition, mixing, live sound engineering, recording pro-
cesses, audio for games” (Murphy et al. 2006).
CURRENT DATA AND CHALLENGES
The proportion of women working in the music industry rose from 45.3%
in 2016 to 49.1% in 2018 (UK Music 2018). Although this headline data
seems encouraging, when looking at the type of roles women are work-
ing in, the picture is quite different. Approximately 21.7% of artists in the
music industry are women, but only 12.3% of songwriters, 2.1% of music
producers, and 3% of engineers/mixers in popular music are women (Smith
et al. 2019) – so women are excluded from crucial roles in the industry.
The low representation of women in the creative roles in the music
industry is perhaps surprising given that, at all stages of education in the
UK, equal (and sometimes higher) numbers of women than men study
music.
The percentage of female students within GCSE Music (Level 2) cohorts
in England has fluctuated between 48% and 57% since 2002 (Figure 14.1,
100
90
80
70
60
%
50
40
30
20
10
0
2002
43.2 45.6 47.3 49.3 51.2 51.6 52.2 51.8 51.8 51.2 50.4 49.4 48.2 45.9 44.7 44.6 43.8
56.8 54.4 52.7 50.7 48.8 48.4 47.8 48.2
Male
Female
48.2 48.8 49.6 50.6 51.8 54.1 55.3 55.4 56.2
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Year
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Figure 14.1 Percentages of Male and Female Students Taking Music GCSE From
2002–2018. The polynomial trend line indicates male percentage
Source: Data from Gill 2010, 2016a; Joint Council for Qualifications 2019a.
221
Addressing Gender Equality in Music Production
data from: (Gill 2010, 2016a; Joint Council for Qualifications 2019a). The
percentage of female students with Music and Music Technology A Level
(Level 3) cohorts has fluctuated between 39% and 54% since 2002 (Gill
2012, 2016b; Joint Council for Qualifications 2019b). Note, the govern-
ment statistics combine the numbers for Music and Music Technology
A-Level courses.
After some years of near parity between 2004 and 2013, it is worrying
that the gender gap between pupils’ take-up of Music seems to be widen-
ing once again. Indeed, the traditional gender divide in subject choices
seems to have deepened since 2013, with the proportion of girls taking
GCSE Music (Level 2) increasing whilst the proportion of girls taking
Design and Technology has fallen from 67% to just 33%.
In England at least, some attribute this widening gender gap to the intro-
duction in many schools of the EBacc (Knott 2018), which has seen an
overall 10% drop in arts GCSE entries, against a 1% overall increase in
total GCSE entries across all subjects.
An overall decline in student numbers for Music Technology A level
(Level 3) is similar. Between 2008 and 2018, the number of students tak-
ing the Music Technology A Level dropped from 3,422 to 1,397 (Pear-
son Qualifications 2019). A survey of 464 secondary schools in England
between 2016 and 2019 underlines this reduction, with 31.7% fewer
schools offering A-level Music Technology over the time period studied
(Daubney and Mackrill 2018).
Splitting the overall total by gender paints a different picture to that
of GCSE Music data. In contrast with Music courses, Music Technol-
ogy courses see much higher numbers of male than female students
(Figure 14.2), with a female percentage of between only 16% to 25%,
Male Female
100
90
80
70
60
%
50
40
30
20
10
0
2008 2009 2010
Year
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
82.6 81.5 83.6 83.1 84.3 82.5 83.0 82.0 78.4 74.6 75.2
17.4 18.5 16.4 16.9 15.7 17.5 17.0 18.0 21.6 25.4 24.8
Figure 14.2 Percentage of Male and Female Students Within the Edexcel (Pearson)
Music Technology A Level From 2008–2018
Source: Data from Pearson Qualifications 2019.
Jude Brereton, et al.
222
although this is somewhat offset by the reduction in numbers of male stu-
dents more so than female students (Figure 14.3), which is not accounted
for by general decline in A-Level cohort size. The more vocational BTEC
First (Level 2) Music Technology courses are also dominated by male stu-
dents (63%), a gender imbalance which deepens as students progress to
Level 3 BTEC National qualifications, where 80% of the students are male
(Ruthmann and Mantie 2017). Such a gender imbalance is of course not
restricted to Music Technology, with most IT and technology subjects at
Level 3 (A Level) seeing in the region of 80% male students.
The pattern of male dominance in Music Technology at Level 3 con-
tinues as students move into Music Technology degree programs. In UK
Higher Education, Music Technology acts as an umbrella term for a variety
of differing approaches, all of which involve music (or audio) and technol-
ogy. Music Technology degree programs have proliferated in the UK after
the introduction of the first Music Technology A level in 1998; Born and
Devine (2015) estimate that numbers taking Music Technology degrees
rose by nearly 1400% between 1994 and 2011. A search in July 2019 for
undergraduate degrees in music technology on UCAS (the Universities
and Colleges Admissions Service – a centralized service for university
admissions in the UK) returns 324 degree programs hosted by 93 different
institutions.
The large numbers of Music Technology degree programs reflect the
wide variety of programs in established Higher Education institutions
which cover some aspect of music and technology, e.g. audio engineering,
music production, music technology, creative music technology, to name
just a small selection. Often the differences among programs center on
the balance between making music with technology and making technol-
ogy for music (and audio). Boehm et al. (2018) have noted a reduction in
3000
Male Female
2000
1000
0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Number
2014 2015 2016 2017
2018
Year
Figure 14.3 Numbers of Male and Female Students Within the Edexcel (Pearson)
Music Technology A Level From 2008–2018
Source: Data from Pearson Qualifications 2019.
223 Addressing Gender Equality in Music Production
the number of ‘Audio Engineering’ oriented degrees over the last decade,
alongside a dramatic increase in ‘Music Production’ type programs. The
broader context of this divide and its implications for program design is
considered through a study of one UK Music Technology masters program
in Brereton et al. (2019).
Obtaining gender-disaggregated data on those studying Music Technol-
ogy in Higher Education in the UK is difficult because of the variety of
Music Technology degrees offered; some fall under Music and Arts HESA
codes, and others might be coded under Engineering Technology HESA
data (HESA 2019). However, a study by Born and Devine (2015) obtained
data for Music and Music Technology degrees between 2007 and 2012
and found that, whereas traditional music degrees saw a gender profile in
line with the overall student population, music technology degrees were
overwhelmingly male: in 2015 only 12% of Music Technology students
in Higher Education were female. This is somewhat unsurprising, given
the larger numbers of male students at Level 2 and Level 3 in Music
Technology.
Girls and women are excluded from the technological aspects of music-
making from an early age – as Ruthmann and Mantie (2017) note, since
the reforms to the UK national curriculum in 2014, music technology is
largely absent in the Key Stage 2 curriculum (for ages 7–11), meaning that
the opportunity is lost to introduce pupils of all genders to music technol-
ogy at this crucial age where we understand that gender norms begin to be
established. Music Technology as a school subject somehow falls into the
male-dominated technology domain, rather than a more gender-balanced
music domain, despite the fact that the most recent A-Level Music Tech-
nology curriculum emphasizes that music is the focus and “technology is
the servant of music, not an end in itself” (Edexcel 2013).
A study by Mathew et al. (2016) estimated that only 7% of members of
the Audio Engineering Society (AES) were not male – this data could only
be estimated since the society does not systematically record the gender of
members. More recently, Young et al. (2018) proposed a new method to
collect accurate gender data on those presenting (paper authors, keynote
speakers, and workshop leads) at AES conferences. Between 2012 and
2016, presenters at AES conferences were 88.98% male, 9.09% female
(1.82% unidentifiable, 0.11% non-binary). The authors have recently
updated the data
1
to include conferences from 2016–2019; a small change
is evident, with participants within this second time period being 85.6%
male, 12.1% female (1.75% unidentifiable, 0.55% non-binary). However,
it is too soon to see whether this is the beginning of an improvement in the
gender balance or just “noise” in the data over time (Figure 14.4).
In order to better gauge whether the positive movement in some of
the gender balance data for education and the industry is reflected in the
aspirations of youngsters, we ran a small survey of female UK second-
ary school pupils (aged 13–18). All were involved in making music or
music technology related activities, and we asked which job roles in the
audio industry they were aware of, and which they might be interested in
pursuing.
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