“This fall, the world’s great symphony orchestras will open their 2018-19 seasons. And just as they have for decades, many of them will be sharply segregated by gender,” write Oliver Staley and Amanda Shendruk in Tuesday’s (10/16) Quartz.com. “Men will again make up the majority of brass, woodwinds, and percussion players, and most harpists will again be women.” Quartz examined the instruments played by musicians at 23 major orchestras, including seven in the U.S. “The results are stark. Of the 2,438 full-time musicians we looked at, 1,677 (69%) were men. But in many instruments, men were even more disproportionately represented. Bassoon (86% male), double bass (95%), and timpani (96%) players are predominately men.… Only the harp, which is 94% female, is as skewed in the other direction…. While elite orchestras are predominately male, the 703 orchestras—professional and amateur—represented by the League of American Orchestras are more evenly divided, with 48% of the players women. But even if an orchestra is gender balanced, there are still consequences when certain instruments are identified with only men or women,” according to League of American Orchestras President and CEO Jesse Rosen. “When women are shut out of certain instruments, all of classical music suffers, he said.” Read Symphony magazine’s 2016 article for more on gender and musical instruments.
Posted October 18, 2018
