Exploring Gender in Music … to Better Grasp Musical Work

Abstract

Buscatto starts with the argument that, in the last twenty years, international scholars have explored ways contemporary female musicians, as compared to their male colleagues, find it more difficult to get access, to remain, and to be recognized as legitimate professionals in various musical worlds – e.g. classical, jazz, rock, pop, techno or rap. While most musical worlds are quite “masculine” – rock, jazz, rap or techno – others are “mixed” – orchestra music, R&B or pop. But in all circumstances, it is always more difficult for women than for men to succeed as a musician in contemporary western societies while all legal barriers have disappeared and formal equality between sexes is considered as a priority. Buscatto states that current research in this field has identified several processes which explain such differences – gendered norms, conventions, stereotypes, networks, family roles or socialisations –, and have explored ways women progressively overcome such barriers – schools, legal rules, financing, producers, artists’ practises or family support. Buscatto discusses how our knowledge of such processes – which produce and legitimate gendered differences as well as question and sometimes overcome them – can enlighten our knowledge about music as work. Based on her current research on gender in music and arts and on artistic work, she shows how such an empirical and theoretical knowledge enables us to better grasp ways musical work is socially constructed and transformed over time.