For a long time, women in some cultures were looked
at as being the inferior gender in the human race. They would be the ones to have
the responsibility of cooking, cleaning, looking after their kids and that is
all they were allowed to do as a livelihood. Shelly M. Jargow mentioned in an
article she wrote that “…women were expected to become home-keepers, bear
children for family labor, and perform daily domestic duties”. If they went as
far as to think about doing a job that was considered as being a man’s
responsibilities, they would have dealt with some repercussions, including death.
However, we live in a world today where women are no longer confined to a
certain space that society placed them into. Women, at least in America for
sure, are free to do anything they want so long as it is not detrimental to
society’s well-being. This includes pursuing a career in music, specifically
any kind of composition or leadership position, such as a band conductor.
Women in the career of music also need to be held at
a higher regard when it comes to the quality of music they create. For example,
I listened to a piece by Amy Bach titled “Symphony in E Minor” about a year
ago. If I would have listened to this without knowing the composer’s name, my inclination
would have suggested that a male composed this piece. This is not because I didn't think that a woman was capable of composing such a piece, but because I
never really thought about a woman being a composer. I have heard of a Bach and
Beetoven, who are two of the greatest classical music composers of all time. As
I heard the piece by Amy Bach for the first time in my music class, I was thinking
to myself that this had to be one of the greatest pieces of music that I've ever heard. It had everything that a good classical piece would have. It was
very cinematic, emotional, and just sonically pleasing overall. However, due
mostly in part to her gender, I think that this had a long-term impact
negatively on her legacy as a whole.
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| Marin Aslop |
As far as females in the world of music conducting
goes, it has improved, however, there is till that disparity in equality
between men and women. Marin Aslop, whom in 2007 became the first woman to ever
conduct a major orchestra (The Baltimore Orchestra) and also became the first
female to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, which is a popular classical
music event in Britain stated in an interview with BBC that she is honored by
all of her achievements but also said that there’s no room for complacency. She
recalled the time when she first started her career and could not get any
employment, with her gender being a factor. “I was rejected for so many things
partly because I was a woman”. She suggested that especially on her quest to
being an orchestra conductor it was especially challenging because people weren’t
used to seeing this kind of thing. She compared it to a woman operating a plane
and admitted that she even hesitates because that’s something she’s not used
to.
As a society, I think that we need to do a better
job of judging a person’s work based off of quality, not based on their gender.
This goes for any career field, not only music. Although I’m not a female, I do
sometimes get tired of hearing the phrase “You do that well for a woman”. I
think that there is still a ways to go when it comes to gender equality.
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