Browsing through the ABC website on the weekend – you know, the publicly funded broadcaster that’s supposed to allow us to escape the commercialism and clickbait that dominates news so much these days – I came across an interesting opening line to a story.
“Scroll through your favourite playlist on your phone. Chances are the majority of musicians are men.”
Oh, one of “those” stories.
Under the heading of “analysis”, Ruby Jones’ piece points out an apparent inequality that exists within the Australian music scene.
“Turn on your radio — it is statistically likely you’ll hear music made by a man,” the story says.
“Go to a summer music festival. Is the headliner a man? Probably. The Australian music scene, like many industries, has a gender problem.”
Trust me, it gets better.
“Jennifer Andrade, 17, and Jade Diaz, 18, are part of All Girl Electronic, a western Sydney program encouraging young women to make music, and address gender imbalance in the industry,” the story says.
“They have found it hard to be taken seriously, previously.”
Could it be that a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old aren’t being taken seriously because, wait for it, they are 17 and 18?
They may have worked hard but they haven’t worked for long. Success takes time, and persistence, regardless of your sex.
Apparently they have “grown up” around line-ups at festivals featuring predominantly male artists and this is somehow disadvantaging them.
I think you get the gist of the story, but to be fair, feel free to read it in full by going here: www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-05/gender-gap-do-men-dominate-australias-music-scene/7988666.
Look, I didn’t set out to write one of “those” rebuttles to a feminist-driven story that pushes for “equality” in an industry that is based on subjectivity, not cold hard quotas.
But please, are we really going to try to frame this argument?
Surely we are doing young girls no favours by constantly drumming into them that they are “disadvantaged” and discriminated against.
Real sexism deserves to be tackled but crap like this only hurts the chances of young girls giving their dreams a crack; it certainly doesn’t encourage them.
We are at risk of creating a culture of entitled whingers with a woe is me attitude.
The opening line of the ABC article almost provides the ultimate contradiction to the piece.
“Scroll through your favourite playlist on your phone. Chances are the majority of musicians are men.”
That’s not actually true in my case, but if it is in yours, I presume it’s because your tastes take you towards a particular artist or band, not because that artist has a penis.
Guess what? The audience controls success in music – now more than any other time in history.
Even millions of viewers and a barrage of publicity can’t catapult a performer from ‘The Voice’ to stardom (as we’ve seen time and time again).
You can’t manufacture success in music, it must be earned and it is driven by what people choose to listen to.
Independent artists regardless of sex have more opportunities to break through than ever before thanks to iTunes and streaming services, while festival line-ups are based on what promoters think will sell tickets, not a percentage of men versus women.
The article itself points out that only one in five APRA members are female, yet this is something any female artist can become a member of. Why aren’t they joining?
If there are legitimate examples of one sex being favoured over the other in any industry, it deserves publicity and should be stamped out.
But if we’re going to analyse every industry that has a gender imbalance, regardless of which way the majority may fall, then we’ll be here for a long time and won’t achieve much.
We are creating a culture of young people who are armed with more excuses than they are lessons.
Failure is a part of success.
When we fail, we learn. But if at every stumble we blame our gender, our age, our look or our background, we simply set ourselves up for failure again.
Originally published in The Western Weekender