Where is She?!

The underrepresentation of women in

Music Education in the United States.
RATIONALE: Women in music are severely Implications for Practice:
underrepresented, whether that be • Work to include equal representation of male and
composers, conductors, or performers. Female female musicians in your classroom’s repertoire,
students deserve positive role models in all history lessons, and classroom visitors.
these fields. Throughout music history, there • Provide equal opportunity for all students to
have been a myriad of female composers, participate in learning experiences.
• Discourage gender norms and encourage students to
conductors, and performers that have been
try new things.
overlooked simply because they were born
• Explain the timelines of female and marginalized
female. When thinking about popular composers, and how it interacts with the more
composers taught in music, it is surprisingly common, male-dominated time-line.
difficult to recall more than one or two female • Acknowledge a lack of female representation, and take
composers that receive regular recognition. the chance to point out that this is not normal.
This lack of awareness and representation
needs to change; it contributes to the idea Suggestions for Further Research:
that there are not any prominent female Abeles, H. E. (1978) The gender-stereotyping of
composers and conductors; this can then musical instruments, 26: 65-75.
deter current and future female students from Barber, H. S. (1973) A study of jazz band by gender.
attempting a career in music. This led me to Jazz Research proceedings Yearbook, 19: 92-99.
two main questions… Payne, B. (1996). The gender gap: Women on music
faculties in American colleges and universities, 1993. College
Music Symposium, 36:, 91–101.
• How can we incorporate “lost” female
musicians into our curriculum and Other Ideas:
increase female representation? • Allow students to make as many choices in the classroom
as you can.
• How can we make sure to leave • When students need someone to support them, be there
gender biases out of our classrooms? for them.
• Don’t allow bulling or teasing in your class, and make
sure students always feel safe to express themselves.
• Turn anything into a learning opportunity.
Article summaries
Bennet, D. (2018): This article discusses female composer representation in high education. It
recommends universities and other higher education institutions program music of marginalized groups. It
also encourages preparing students for what to do when they have to “face when they enter the workforce
and confront normalized sexist attitudes”.
Duchen, J. (2015): This article addresses that although there are not many female composers through
history, even those existed aren’t acknowledged in education. The article ends with a call to action on equal
representation in music history for women.
Morton, C. (1994): They start with the parallel theory that is done by creating a timeline of revolutionary
female musicians and composers that runs parallel to the white male timeline that already exists in
mainstream education. The source then diverges into a theory on how philosophers incorporate gender biases
into the very core of social theory and what music is as a whole, and this is mirrored into how people teach
and are taught, and the societal expectations it imposes on men and women.
Green, L. (1997): This source discusses how the feminization of teaching jobs led to university professors
at the top and elementary teachers at the bottom. This meant that men were getting the jobs in higher
education since they were considered more intelligent and professional while women ended up teaching
things like elementary school music and other “low-skill” jobs.