Female representation and the lack thereof

Jan

Jan

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Dont want to mansplain but i liked the old thread and want to start it here again. Plus baby girl #3 is coming in september and i want a better representation for my girls.
 
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So now that i have finished reading the linke scientific american issue there are really some interesting points. It is interesting to see how much research is still missing on the female cycle and menstruation. While after the development of the pill the ability to pause or turn off the cycle was quickly exploited, there is not too much research on the consequences of These interventions. Also there is no geeral understanding yet About causes for the pain many women experience. Which also leads to doctors often overlooking more serious diseases because pain is fastly interpreted as period pain and treated with Hormones.

The second article i found shocking is that the US is one of the few industrial countries were the rates of maternal mortality are actually rising. This increase seems to be mainly driven by high maternal mortality rates of "non-hispanic black" (denomination for the article ) women. It is unclear what are all the factors contributing to this but acces to Health care seems to be one. ( but not the only one, since the higher Risk for black women seems to be prevalent regardless of income, education or geographical Location within the us. Also, other groueps like hispanic women do not see higher risks.
 
I've been thinking about this ever since Robert Christgau accused Fantano of bias against female artists; what proportion of people out there making music are female? I've had no luck finding an answer, I'd imagine its a very difficult thing to quantify.

Obviously about half of all people are women, and its clear that much less than half of people in music are women. This got me looking over my lists and ratings and stuff trying to figure out the split between male/female, as an example a bit under 25% (evenly-ish distributed) of my all time top 100 albums (depending how you count it) were made by women, or a woman primarily represents the music. But do women account for more or less than 25% of all music? How can we know if we have a bias? Obviously there is a bias by default against women in the industry, and on a personal level I know women are responsible for some of my favorite music ever, but I can't help but wonder.
 
BoilerRhapsody said:
I've been thinking about this ever since Robert Christgau accused Fantano of bias against female artists; what proportion of people out there making music are female? I've had no luck finding an answer, I'd imagine its a very difficult thing to quantify.

Obviously about half of all people are women, and its clear that much less than half of people in music are women. This got me looking over my lists and ratings and stuff trying to figure out the split between male/female, as an example a bit under 25% (evenly-ish distributed) of my all time top 100 albums (depending how you count it) were made by women, or a woman primarily represents the music. But do women account for more or less than 25% of all music? How can we know if we have a bias? Obviously there is a bias by default against women in the industry, and on a personal level I know women are responsible for some of my favorite music ever, but I can't help but wonder.
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This might be a little simplistic, but in my opinion, you either have to assume that women are for some biologicaal reason either less creative or less interested in music or less inclined to professional careers in music or we assume that there is a bias hindering women. With these choices i stand firmly in the second camp
 
Jan said:
This might be a little simplistic, but in my opinion, you either have to assume that women are for some biologicaal reason either less creative or less interested in music or less inclined to professional careers in music or we assume that there is a bias hindering women. With these choices i stand firmly in the second camp
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I think it's probably a little bit of both. The hours required in the traditional industry don't necessarily work well with raising a family, especially if you're the one who actually has to give birth. Being out of the industry for even 4-5 months can put you really far behind many of your peers (this is really dependent on your position but I'm thinking of A&Rs, and further up the executive ladder).. Likewise, those positions are typically filled by what one could argue are the ideal years for a woman to become pregnant. A man can still have children later and you see a lot of artists and label people end up having kids later on in life. Women, unfortunately, don't or didn't really have that option.

Further to that point and lending more credence to your second point though is that the industry was built by a lot of guys that were literally gangsters. A hyper macho air was part and parcel of this as that was the world these guys came from. This meant a lot of songwriters (both men and probably women) were strong armed out of publishing rights amongst other things and just shitty deals all around. I think that made it a much more toxic environment for women to even attempt to make it in the industry..

And from there is just becomes a cycle of not enough girls seeing enough representation in the media to envision themselves one day being like that.. and we're slowly working away at that but it will still be another decade at least before we see a true equilibrium start to take hold.

Anyway, that's my two cents and forgive me if I rambled on.
 
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Clint Howard said:
I think it's probably a little bit of both. The hours required in the traditional industry don't necessarily work well with raising a family, especially if you're the one who actually has to give birth. Being out of the industry for even 4-5 months can put you really far behind many of your peers (this is really dependent on your position but I'm thinking of A&Rs, and further up the executive ladder).. Likewise, those positions are typically filled by what one could argue are the ideal years for a woman to become pregnant. A man can still have children later and you see a lot of artists and label people end up having kids later on in life. Women, unfortunately, don't or didn't really have that option.
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Okay, but these are all structural/systemic barriers that I think actually support a bias rather than an issue of women being less interested or inclined. It isn't as if any industry is particularly friendly to women. Women go to jobs pregnant and within days or weeks of giving birth. Most American women don't get 4-5 months off for childbirth. And I think you'll find that men are having children right along at all levels of their career--people in general are having children later in life, but it's still totally expected and understood for men to be away and working as much as any chosen career requires, while women combat both the perception that they won't do so, but also that they are bad if they do. Ultimately, if the industry valued the contributions of women, it would accommodate them. But the same can be said of just about every industry, so...
 
On FB about Ant someone posed a question to Don Was about Blue Note about evening out the roster, let's see if it is included in the semi-AMA
 
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