256 Sharon Jagger and Helen Turner
Both Lauren and Aubrey recognize their presence in the industry is jux-
taposed against these masculine norms and associations. Does this con-
text present obstacles for women once they have managed to enter the
industry? A US study by Reimer and Bridwell (1982) suggests that women
entering traditionally male occupations face three significant barriers to
belonging: male skepticism, sexual harassment, and feelings of personal
inadequacy. To varying degrees, all of these barriers are experienced by
Aubrey and Lauren as they pursue their careers in music production.
Whilst both women face sexism that many women generally experience,
we focus on those experiences that are specifically related to their work
life. The stories of Aubrey and Lauren reveal that male skepticism and
feelings of inadequacy are significant issues that require the cultivation
of resilience and are connected to how both women find legitimacy as
professional producers.
Male skepticism can take the form of initial dismissal of a woman in the
studio environment, as Lauren has noticed:
When I rst started working [in the studio] a couple of people were
doing rehearsals and . . . they would assume I was a secretary or some-
thing. And I’m like, I’m literally a multi-award-winning engineer and
producer, this is so frustrating. . . . Or like people ring up and they go
like, “Oh, I want an engineer, can I speak to one of the men, please?
Because I want to speak to an engineer”. And I’m like, “I’m an engi-
neer as well”. So, it’s stu like that that still happens.
Encounters like these reveal how Lauren is required to continually re-
establish her credentials, which in turn suggests that the studio space
has been originally developed as space for men, containing roles that are
highly gendered; the female entrant is initially perceived as auxiliary. The
need to say “I’m an engineer” to reinforce Lauren’s place at the desk high-
lights the dissonance between the female and the role in the imagination.
This is enforced materially where the physical space is shaped around the
male body, as we noted in the introduction with, for example, the absence
of female toilets; women become “bodies out of place” (Ahmed, 2000;
Puwar, 2004) when they do not fit in with the assumptions made about
what a woman should be doing in the studio (singing, administration,
cleaning, making the tea). This is a hidden skepticism that women face
because they do not look like an engineer or producer.
For Aubrey, the male skepticism is more overt and consciously expressed
in the form of hostility from male clients:
I’ve had a lot of trouble with middle-aged men who are my clients . . .
when I get very rude, harsh emails through . . . I thought about it and
I looked at these quotes [from emails] and every single one of them
was from a middle-aged man, which I thought was interesting.
The pattern Aubrey has noticed in how her work is judged can be inter-
preted as both a gendered and generational conflict; the middle-aged male
257 The Female Music Producer
here is potentially more likely than younger men, or women, to display
hostility, condescension, and disrespect, which Aubrey suspects is related
to her being female. Aubrey highlights a suspicion that gendered power
asymmetries can be compounded by age difference; her experience is of
the older man discrediting her status, whilst she draws confidence from
her longevity in the industry. Such male skepticism implies that women
producers need to outperform male counterparts to overcome (sometimes
unconscious) beliefs that women are not “naturally” suited to the technical
production process.
Perhaps more insidious and undermining than male skepticism are the
feelings of inadequacy women experience in male-dominated fields. Such
personal anxieties are clearly expressed by Lauren, who identifies the
“imposter syndrome” as a typically female response to forms of skepti-
cism. The sense of marginalization that the “imposter syndrome” fosters
is fundamentally connected to how gender is framed in difference, which
impacts on how women earn their credentials. Whilst both Lauren and
Aubrey have chosen individualized paths and have strategically used their
femaleness to carve out a space in the music production industry, the cost
is a vulnerability to feelings of inadequacy that surface as Lauren and
Aubrey talk about the ways in which they seek legitimization.
“THEY PICK ME BECAUSE I’M A GIRL”: ENTRY
POINTS, LEGITIMIZATION, AND THE IMPOSTER
SYNDROME
There is not a single route into the music production profession, but it may
be that not all entry points carry equal validity and may indeed be weighted
according to gender. Sandstrom’s (2000) discussion of US women mixing
engineers in the live music scene suggests that there is an audible dif-
ference in the quality of sound that women mix in comparison to that
of male engineers, and she argues this is partly to do with the gendered
entry points to the profession. Men are apprenticed as roadies (the lifting
of heavy equipment required for live amplification), leaving women to
pursue the craft of live mixing through the classroom, grounding them in
the basic science of amplified sound, which Sandstrom argues produces
more nuanced listening skills. Entry points may then artificially highlight
gender difference. The choice between entry through education and entry
through experience is more complex for Aubrey and Lauren, who have
neither obtained qualifications nor served apprenticeships as runners or
assistants but have entered the profession through the leveraging of social
capital and self-training. What is significant in their accounts is the hint
that established routes into engineering and production may be more dif-
ficult paths for women because of the cultural conditions that masculinize
the role.
In contrast to Sandstrom’s commentary, Aubrey was resistant to the
classroom route because, at the time she sought to enroll, such courses
were dominated by men, something she observes, as a visiting lecturer,
258 Sharon Jagger and Helen Turner
is still often the case. Lauren also eschewed the classroom route and left
school as soon as she could to pursue a career as an artist before mak-
ing the transition to producer. Both women disrupt the usual system of
legitimacy, gained either through educational credentials or employment
in learner positions. Using Bourdieu’s (1984 [2010]) understanding of
the process of belonging, such legitimization is understood as designed
to protect the boundaries of cultural fields; to be recognized as com-
petent or expert requires the university certificate or the completing of
an apprenticeship, however informal. To belong is to have command of
specialist insider language and knowledge (Porcello, 2004) and to pos-
sess official credentials that allow entry. The autodidact (a person who
teaches herself), using Bourdieu’s framework, may not be recognized as
legitimate.
It may be that Lauren and Aubrey jeopardize their belonging in music
production because of their autodidactic approach. However, they per-
ceive that the educational entry point is weighted towards the male student,
a situation that is challenging for women where they are in the minor-
ity. Aubrey’s story of how she became a music producer offers a deeper
insight into why female and male entry points might be differentiated. As
a young person she had applied to a ‘prestigious’ university to do a music
industry course. At the interview stage she was told by (male) lecturers
that she would be the only female on the course:
That put me o. . . . I just thought to myself, “I don’t want to be the
only girl on a course”, so I decided not to go for that. . . . I think prob-
ably at that age I didn’t want to, I liked to blend in, I wouldn’t like to
stand out. I thought I would get too much attention.
At the formalized entry point to a music or music technology career, where
women are in an extreme minority, there is a gendered barrier. Accord-
ing to Young (1990), girls are often conditioned in feminine “modalities”
that respond to “the threat of being seen” (p. 155) giving rise to a self-
consciousness that, in Aubrey’s case, prevented her younger self from
entering the classroom as the only female. Again, the “body out of place”
(Puwar, 2004) is generated through being a minority body, and the discom-
fort this brings may be a significant barrier for some women. Visibility is
a burden and therefore a barrier.
Where women are resistant to the classroom route to gain credentials
because of their minority status, the autodidactic route is available. How-
ever, this lack of official credentials means those who are self-taught are
more vulnerable to the “imposter syndrome”. Lauren sees her lack of a
formal education in engineering and production as problematic at the same
time as she strongly defends her individualism:
I think the common thing with women in music is like the imposter
syndrome situation, because I haven’t followed a path, I have no seal
of approval, I have nothing, sometimes I do feel like, I’ve dug really
far into this hole and I have no support backing me. . . . Someone’s
259 The Female Music Producer
gonna go, “she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about” and I’m
going to go, “I don’t” [laughs]. So, denitely, like, that is a disadvan-
tage, but at the same time, because I’ve always had the mindset of
being dierent, I kind of don’t care and go okay you may think that
but I’m just going to carry on doing my own thing. You can judge me
however much you want.
The lack of a credentialed entry into the profession allows Lauren’s sense
of being an imposter to undermine her confidence. At times, she feels
fraudulent as she imagines that others question her status; she has no
certificate that proves her abilities as an engineer and producer, yet she
remains proud of her ability to carve out her individual path. She also sub-
verts normative views towards the way in which credentials in the music
business are earned, announcing on her website (Deakin Davis, 2019) that
she is self-taught, giving the autodidact an elevated status and troubling
how legitimacy is defined.
Our conversation with Lauren took a more interesting turn. The impos-
ter syndrome is gendered not only because she is the precarious autodi-
dact, but also because her femaleness is made the basis of her success and
therefore simultaneously undermines her sense of deserving that success
on a level playing field of skill:
But the imposter syndrome is really evident through practically eve-
ry female, even artists, and engineers, especially the engineers and
producers I know. They don’t feel like they deserve it, because, and
this is like the crux of the situation of being given advantages for be-
ing a woman, because I feel like I’ve only achieved this because I’m
a woman, and my skill set doesn’t match the opportunities that I’ve
been given. So that’s where imposter syndrome comes in, thinking,
“I shouldn’t be working on this session, I don’t know what I’m talking
about”. But they pick me because I’m a girl.
Being treated favorably because she is female, being the recipient of posi-
tive action, feeds Lauren’s sense of unbelonging and compounds the feel-
ings of inadequacy that the lack of credentials generates. What Lauren
is describing is the toxic side of leveraging sex and gender difference.
Whilst there are benefits to marketing the notion of the female producer,
which we discuss shortly, chasing legitimacy becomes a perpetual task for
the self-taught female, which is undermined by the suspicion that oppor-
tunities are offered “because I’m a girl” rather than being skilled enough
for the job.
Being recognized publicly within the industry may provide a creden-
tialed status that can be used as an antidote to the feelings of inadequacy,
but this can be double-edged. Returning to Lauren’s response to being
mistaken for the secretary in the studio, she uses her award-winning status
as a defense against skepticism. However, Lauren’s ability to maintain
confidence in her status is jeopardized by her anxieties about inadequacy:
“This goes to the women’s imposter syndrome. I think I won because I’m
260 Sharon Jagger and Helen Turner
a woman”. The sense of legitimacy is continually undermined by the pow-
erful feelings that one is an outsider, someone who does not and will not
belong.
As Lauren and Aubrey reflect on how they cultivate their status as pro-
ducers, they identify other sources of legitimacy. Aubrey sees legitimacy in
collaborating with popular artists, who accrue cultural capital from which
she can borrow, becoming an unofficial talent spotter as she attempts to
catch hold of an artist’s upward trajectory: “You kind of have to do a bit of
A&R scouting as producers as well because you need to figure out which
ones are potentially going to take off hugely, and you kind of latch on to
them and produce them”. Both women invest significantly in the relation-
ships they have with artists to benefit from a quid pro quo arrangement
where legitimacy is shared.
The attainment of credentials through awards and through relationships
with significant people who have already accrued social and cultural capi-
tal demands a high level of emotional labor on the part of both women.
Whilst there are benefits to being able to provide continual emotional
labor, particularly when leveraged by women, there is a negative side, a
cost that both Aubrey and Lauren recognize they pay.
“I DEFINITELY OVERCOMPENSATED”: EMOTIONAL
LABOR AND THE ECONOMY OF SMILES
When Lauren began her foray into music production, she invested heav-
ily in emotional labor to accrue the social capital she felt she needed to
progress. Networking as an entry point for Lauren is gendered in nuanced
ways:
Starting out as I did, I have to proper like, “Oh my God, you’re so
amazing. You’re so lovely”. I was really, really enthusiastic. . . . I
would say starting out I denitely overcompensated. And it was cru-
cial that I did, because otherwise . . . and I’ll admit some of these guys
liked me to be around because I was nice, smiley, and laughy. . . . I
don’t think the guys have to be overly enthusiastic, smiley, laughy, to
get the same level of response. . . . I had to invest so much into my
emotional, social expression to get the same return.
This vignette of female emotional labor is part of the “economy of smiles”
(Bartky, 1997: 135). Lauren’s description of gendered expectations in
interactions relates as much to her body as to her emotional work. As
Bartky explains:
Feminine faces, as well as bodies, are trained to the expression of
deference. . . . Women are trained to smile more than men, too. In the
economy of smiles, as elsewhere, there is evidence that women are
exploited, for they give more than they receive in return.
(p. 135)
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