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At the beginning of high school, I met this group of friends. They were cool, skateboarders, alternative. I wanted to be with them, to be like them. I wanted the same shoes, to learn how to make ollies, to learn to drink and to roll cigarettes and joints. I wanted to hang out late at night, be part of a crew, listen to good music.

Because yes, when you are fifteen, the music you listen makes us whole persons, makes us part in a social gearing, determines where we stand on the scale.

And unfortunately, in this very masculine group, listening to our music went hand in hand with rejecting many female singers and artists, especially the ones in the pop culture, with notorious female popularity.

No, for us, it was rock, reggae, metal, ska, French chanson, shortly, musical styles where the industry leaves little room for women.

Not only in their representation as artists and active figures of these sounds, but also in their community. For me, this rejection may be also directly connected to my gender and identity crisis, trying to fit as much as I could to a male image, and by that choosing unconsciously music communities which are, in their essence, related to virility.

Music is, amongst others, an area where gender constructions and the division of tasks are shaped.
Apart from singing and opera roles - although the distribution between women and men has known variations according to countries, eras and works -, nothing a priori obliges to entrust this part of instrument to one rather than another: music seems to be a sexless artistic domain.

But only in theory.

On one hand, the gender division of musical work causes horizontal segregation, differentiating defined roles and relegating women to certain specific instrument areas, as Adele shows off.

But, on the other hand, it also causes vertical discrimination limiting their access to the best placed positions. It is particularly evident in well seen jobs as soloist, conductor positions, music teacher in prestigious schools etc. Never has a single woman been named for a Grammy as “producer of the year” in six years. And if you look a the five most prestigious categories of this cult ceremony, women represent only 9.3% of the artists named, crushed by 90.7% of men.

How many bandmastress or conductresses do you know? How many female music producers?

On June 19, 2019, during the first Assises des femmes de la musique et du spectacle, 13 organizations presented a study on the place of women in these sectors and announced a series of priority actions. The study established on a panel of nearly 12,000 companies whose collective agreements are those of music publishing, phonographic publishing, or private performing arts.
Compared with the general working population, women are underrepresented in the musical workforce, particularly among intermittent workers with only 34% female artists and 25% technicians.