Did you know that after they switched to blind auditions, major symphony orchestras hired women between 30% to 55% more? Before bringing in “blind auditions” with a screen to conceal the the candidate, women in the top 5 major orchestras made up less than 5% of the musicians performing.
so I believe it was actually more complicated than that, in interesting ways. Because at first, when they did blind auditions, they were STILL hiring more men.
…Then they put down a carpet, so that high heels didn’t clack on the floor, and BOOM women were suddenly getting hired.
The testers didn’t even know that’s what they were picking up on, which just goes to show how tiny of a cue it takes for misogyny to kick in.
The case of blind auditions for orchestras and how it dramatically changed the gender makeup of orchestras is a very illuminating example of gender bias, and an interesting possible way of countering it.
I’m relieved and surprised that once the original blind auditions didn’t work they didn’t just throw their hands up and go “Nah women do just suck I guess”
Didn’t something like this happen with a film festival? They noticed women were only winning something like 5% of the awards at the film festival so they switched to blind judging and suddenly women were winning about half the awards at the film festival, forgot which film festival it was though
This is why I am against the reframing of sexism to “Gender roles are imposed on everyone and bad for everyone”. That is true, on a surface level, but accounts for none of the discrimination specifically against women that exists in every field. It is compounded by gender roles, women in stereotypically male roles face more discrimination than they maybe otherwise would, but it is not the whole story.
Music is not something stereotyped as a mans thing. In fact I would go as far as to say the opposite, a lot of people might well class the arts as a womans thing. Yet this sexist discrimination is still wildly prevalent in those fields that are seen as womanly.
