Women performing in live music as performers and in other roles at the level and stages in South Africa face exclusion from decision-making, unequal pay, difficulties in adapting to stereotypical roles, constant microaggressions, and the genuine danger of gender-based violence. Array This is what a new industry study commissioned by the Southern African Music Rights Organisation (Samro) reveals.
Samro is the oldest royalty collection and distribution organization in South Africa. Like other similar South African bodies, it is managed through the industry and collects a percentage for artists whenever their paintings are represented, disseminated or used commercially. Concerned about reports of poor attention to female music creators and their underrepresentation in key roles, Samro began to focus on this factor in 2022.
As a South African music scholar who has undertaken commercial studies, I led the latest studies project.
Surveys around the world have highlighted significant gender inequalities in musical work, and some educational studies in South Africa recommend that the scenario is very similar. But this is the largest pattern studied so far in the country. New knowledge puts a figure on the challenge and gives a voice to those who feel it.
Conducted late in 2023, the research drew online responses from 357 people, 75% of them women, about both personal experiences and observations of equity, representation and safety in the industry. “Observations” gave space to those respondents who did not identify as women, as well as those who needed the security of distance in describing what might have been traumatic personal experiences.
The survey questions emerged from Samro’s extensive initial studies in 2022 as inputs from a roundtable held in Johannesburg as the occasion of our survey publication.
The majority of respondents worked full time in the music business and had been active in the industry for over ten years. All ethnic teams and provinces in South Africa were represented (albeit the more urban pattern). Respondents reported running in a variety of musical styles, from rap to rock to classical.
Despite their long experience in the sector, 56% of them say they earn less than R5,000 (US$270) per month. This represents less than a fifth of the national average salary.
Unfortunately, some of what those anonymous female musicians told us was predictable. Sixty-three percent said microaggressions, such as out-of-character comments, were common, as was mansplaining: having your points ignored until a man repeats them. One of them said:
I said it because I’m a woman. . . I’m weak when it comes to rap.
Another replied that they were given “a name as musical director, with no authority to do the task properly. “Half of them have experienced job interviews that raised irrelevant gender questions. 62% of them were expected to take up non-musical and genre jobs, such as catering during band rehearsals.
Some of the insights were even more troubling. Almost a third of them have experienced work pressure to have sex. More than a third have not noticed anyone intervening to help them in cases of gender-based harassment. 42% were faced with the assumption that “I must be sexually had because I am a musician. ” One of them reported:
I had to leave the company because I had refused sexual favors.
Farmer-led studies have been exploitation sites of all kinds:
Bullying occurs in personal settings such as. . . Studies.
In a context where South African women face high rates of gender-based violence, 68% of them do not feel that they can go to and from work. Many did not have privacy to put on their level suits. During the tour, the women said they had to. Percentage of rooms with male roommates unless they pay for their own rooms.
Paying for transportation and separate rooms was one facet of what’s considered the music industry’s pink tax: the prices added for simply being a woman, which also come with an investment in appearance and dressing to fit men’s police gaze. . And, of course, the parents’ fees. Musicians, both male and female, can be parents, but as one of our respondents observed:
Many male instrumentalists I know have children. However, they either do not live with them or have a feminine structure.
We focused on women who are in music, but many responses alluded to the fact that harassment has its roots in music education. Some tools and functions are known through guardians such as male teachers as “appropriate” for women, especially the role of singer. The rock bassist observed:
There’s a lot of sexualization of women who play tools like drums and bass. . . I started dressing more masculine to avoid this.
In our employer – and around the world – women were conspicuously absent from technical, controlling, and decision-making positions, such as production and engineering, something that had also been pointed out by Samro’s first survey. This lack of role models can create a vicious cycle of underrepresentation: if you can’t see it, you can’t be. Samro has introduced workshops especially for women in those fields.
Our report also included contributions from female singers in our 2023 launch panel. They described that they had been tasked with developing the concept of a credit-free, payment-free maker, i. e. creating compositions for free. When asked if they could easily name female songwriters running in the industry, one interviewee responded:
Only with a little luck can I name (women composers) because I am part of it. . . We are the only ones who pronounce our names.
Poor operating conditions and low pay are, of course, not unique to female musicians in a largely project-based, independent and unregulated sector. Several responses highlighted that operating situations in the music industry are uniformly poor.
Our interviewees stated that their main requirement was that all artistic paintings be subject to applicable legislation, adding minimum wage, fitness and protection and anti-discrimination, supporting the implementation of codes of practice for employers, venues and studios.
Despite these obstacles, South African musicians are fighters. Contrary to the doubts that emerge from some foreign surveys, 90% of our respondents describe themselves as confident of having a place in music.
The imperative is to create increasingly safe spaces where musicians can make their own possible choices about the expression of their feminine identity, free from any tension to overinterpret or suppress it. Our studies have begun; There is still much to be done.
The study was carried out as part of the ConcertsSA program in collaboration with IKS Cultural Consulting. Support came from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Royal Norwegian Embassy.
Gwen Ansell, Associate, Gordon Institute of Business, University of Pretoria
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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