Music & Gender
MUSIC & GENDER
GENDER IN THE ORCHESTRA
Today, the top 20 orchestras in the US are predominately male: about 63%. Until the 1960s, women playing in orchestras was almost nonexistent. Today, 95% of harpists in the top 20 orchestras in the US are female. But this is the only instrument in which women have a significant monopoly on in the orchestra. Even the flute, very often seen as a "feminine instrument" due, I assume, to its high pitch is only 68% female. You can check the percentages of other orchestra instruments here. These differences were very fun to look at. For example, the trumpet section is 97% male.
Suby Raman is a composer and blogger and compiled data on male vs. female presence in the nations top 20 orchestras. He wrote this article for Classic FM.
I found this strange because I know that there is no shortage of female musicians earning performance degrees. It made me wonder why there was a gap between the percentage of women learning in schools and the percentage of them taking places in top orchestras.
One of the theories I found interesting is one done by a team of professors in the Social Psychology and Quantitative Psychology department of the University of Barcelona. They set out to find a connection between gender and self-determination theory in music conservatories.
Self-determination theory (SDT) is a macro theory of human motivation. Among other things, this theory says that people have a natural tendency towards growth and well-being.
There are three elements that affect the SDT: autonomy, relatedness, and competency. These describe your intrinsic feelings and motivations, which are affected by your environment. The study wanted to show if men and women had different levels of amotivation when exposed to the same environs.
The most significant of their findings is that women in conservatory settings rely more on their autonomy; the sense of control of ones goals, behaviour, and learning; than men. Autonomy is heavily dependent on self-esteem and confidence. You do not feel in control of your life if you do not have the confidence to call it your own.
In a world where it is all too common for women to be less confident than men due to a number of social pressures, their sense of autonomy is usually lower than a man. Women consistently rank themselves lower in ability than a male counterpart of the same skill level, a well-known phenomenon dubbed The Confidence Gap. In the music world, this might mean that a woman is perfectly capable of getting a certain job, but may lack the confidence to apply for it.
I really enjoyed reading your findings on the ratios of male to female in the top 20 orchestras in the country. I also find it funny that 95% of harpists are female, but being someone who cannot remember seeing a male harpist in person, I can believe it. I also thought that your info on SDT and The Confidence Gap was quite interesting.
ReplyDeleteyou can really tell how much effort you put into the research for this blog, I appreciate the statistics but I appreciate the ability to back them up even more. I also liked the bit about SDT.
ReplyDeleteThe gender gap in orchestras really is tragic. Thank you for putting up those charts about it; it's really helpful to have a visual. I do think it's interesting (and obvious in hindsight) that women rely much more on their autonomy than men do. I do think it's sad that even in today's world, a woman cannot feel as confident as a man can, at least when it comes to going for an orchestra audition.
ReplyDeleteYour blog was really interesting, and I enjoyed learning about the SDT theory. The chart you linked showing the ratio of male to female musicians who play those instruments was really interesting. The chart shows that only 36% of cello performers are female, but in the Converse Symphony Orchestra there are more female cellists than male which i thought was neat. That probably just has to do with the school's history as a women's college though.
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