What Is It Like To Be A Female Musician?

 When students begin playing instruments, it already becomes clear which instruments have "assigned" genders to them. Once in the professional field, it then becomes clear which gender is preferred in which musical jobs. In this post I'm going to explore how gender correlates with specific instruments, but I'm also going to touch the lack of women in many musical fields. 

Instruments And Genders

For my band/orchestra friends, think of your current and past ensembles that you've been in. Were there many boys playing flute or clarinet? Were there many girls playing tuba or string bass? If the answer is yes, then you had a very rare experience. In fact, studies show that women take up high percentages in flute and violin and 95% in harp, and men are around 91& in bass and 95-97% in trombone, tuba, and trumpet. 

Now why is this?

I found my statistics above in an interesting article  on bsomusic.org that focuses on this question. According to it, brass instruments tend to be more "masculine" because in the past they were used for hunting and military purposes, both jobs that were dominated by men. Women were also discouraged from playing brass instruments because they were too dainty and pretty to blow through them. Men's fascination with women and focus on using them as something nice to look at had a large effect on this, because a woman playing a trumpet could easily be seen as a woman "destroying her precious plump lips". 

Another theory mentioned in this article is that musicians tend to pick instruments that fit their voice, since playing an instrument is a way of expressing oneself. Women tend to have higher-pitched voices and men vice versa, so this would explain why women usually play higher instruments and men play lower ones. This hypothesis was actually very interesting to me, because I feel like my voice has a relatively wide range to it, much like the clarinet. 

Either way, there is an obvious stigma that boys play brass and percussion and girls play most woodwinds and strings. The stereotypes are so forced through media, peers, and older generations that children tend to naturally gravitate towards gender appropriate instruments and are discourage from doing the opposite. It's very sad because instruments shouldn't have a gender assigned to them. When you pick an instrument you're supposed to pick one that makes you happy, not one that you're expected to pick. 

Discrimination Against Women In Performance 

When I was thinking about this topic, I was immediately brought back to my junior year of highschool when I took AP Lang. I had to read this book called Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (I highly recommend it!) which contains many examples of how the human mind makes decisions, perceptions, and inferences in the "blink" of an eye. One of the examples that Gladwell uses is Abbie Conant, a female trombonist who auditioned for the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. Since this book is about perception and judgement, this section was purposed to explain how seeing the musician affected how they were scored after they played despite their actual musical talent. These factors could range from attire to posture, but also to gender. 

The concept of blind auditions was mentioned a lot during this section. The Munich Philharmonic included these, meaning that Abbie's initial audition was played without her judges knowing that she was a woman. Impressed by her performance, the judges were more than willing to accept her into the ensemble. However, when they learned that she was actually a woman, they were shocked and actually disgusted. Abbie was even demoted to second trombone because she was a woman, but thankfully she won in a lawsuit against the orchestra and regained her original position. 

Here is a video of Abbie Conant playing a piece called Pond by William Osborne. The piece is very odd in nature and very ornamental, but Conant's tone is absolutely gorgeous and focused. The only trombone experience I have had is through brass techniques class, but I can tell that it must take a lot of advanced technical work to create that vibrato-like trill sound with the trombone slide being moved back and forth. Being a woman does not make you better or worse than a man on a certain instrument, and Abbie Conant proves that very well. 

Women In Composition And Conducting

Many of us musicians know that most of the classical music we play was written by an old white man, and this still applied to a lot of modern music as well. However, I am very thankful to have learned about women such as Hildegard von Bingen, Clara Schumann, and Amy Beach. Women have almost always been present in composing music despite the misogynistic view that it wasn't a fitting job for them, but because of that view they were commonly invisible. I wanted to take this opportunity to explore a modern female composer who wouldn't be able to produce much if it weren't for these women. 

Here is a performance of The Dancing Moonlight by Dai Wei, a modern female composer. This particular piece is based on a mixture of Western and Eastern music, combining Caucasian and Chinese into one piece. I absolutely love the complex texture of this piece and all of the matching parts that play off of eachother. 

It is nice to see more publicity being given to female composers, whether they are long gone or still alive and creating more pieces today. It seems like the discrimination is starting to fade away, but we still have a long way to go before playing pieces by women starts becoming more normalized. 

As for the conducting side, this subject is very personal to me. After graduating from a highschool with a female band and orchestra director, I came here to be directed under Dr. Lalama. That means statistically, I have had almost as many academic ensemble instructors that were female as were male. I find that so fascinating that I happened to have that history, because outside of that I never see any female conductors. 

I remember last year learning about Marin Alsop, who is currently the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. I was so intrigued by this, because somehow I had never went to see the BDO despite living only 40 minutes away, and I somehow had never even heard of her until last year. This is most likely because, well, women aren't usually as appreciated in the conducting field as men are. 

Here is a video of Marin Alsop conducting Dvorák's Symphony No. 9. You can tell after watching some of this how expressive she is, but she also isn't "dainty" like a typical woman would be. She is still forceful, commanding, and direct, which is what is expected in a conducting position. I love how she leads the orchestra in a way that tells the audience that she should be treated like any man would in her position. Marin Alsop is an incredible inspiration to women who want to become conductors, including myself. Whether it is for a highschool ensemble or a larger one, I know I will be conducting somewhere along the way. I am so thankful to have so many strong women as my role models, because they taught me that it is normal to conduct, despite what gender I might be.