Facing the music: Stereotyping of and by women in US music journalism

This study updates and expands the application of stereotyping and professional socialization to music journalism in a way that is generalizable to the United States music journalism industry, and seeks to understand the role women journalists play in counteracting or perpetuating stereotyping of women musicians. A content analysis of 936 articles finds significant stereotyping of women musicians in major US music publications during 2016. The stories, randomly sampled from eight top US publications, were predominantly about men artists and by men authors, and were more likely to discuss women musicians’ appearance and relationships, and used more sexualized and emotional language. Improvement was found in that articles were no more likely to discuss women musicians’ age and youth than men’s. Women journalists were just as likely to stereotype women musicians as men journalists were, and more so in one category. We expand stereotyping by incorporating insights from professional socialization and applying it to the ‘soft news’ yet male-dominated field of music journalism, adding to our knowledge of hard news fields such as politics, business and sports. It also updates the few studies of music journalism from decades ago, showing little progress in the blatant stereotyping of women musicians

5 “Distinguished success … in teaching Music as a science”

This chapter marks the existence and influence of professional women on women musicians by first defining and contextualizing scientific music, examining how schools approached teaching music as science, and exploring public commentary on music, science, and gentility in combination. Part 3 closely examines specific people who taught in southern schools, from exotic foreign teachers to local familiars. The final section interrogates the circumstances surrounding the women who stretched the ideals of gentility, those who took on more masculine roles (as businesswomen, organists in cathedrals, and directors of civic music), and how they maintained respectability while in the public gaze in places such as New Orleans, Mobile, and Charleston.

Migrant Female Musicians and their Fight for Social Rights

The aim of this essay is to examine the social action of women composers, often obliged to migrate, for long or short periods, in search of greater freedom and affirmation of their musical talent. The history of yesterday and today features numerous women musicians, composers and performers, active in the production of music, in social and political life, who often had and have to travel and migrate to assert themselves. Going on tour has always been part of the life of the artist – but for women it was not easy to travel freely and at will, on their own besides. Until the nineteenth century, such a thing was almost always strictly forbidden. Sometimes women composers and performers left the countries in which they resided for personal reasons, driven not only by the “compulsion” to change country because in their own it was impossible to choose the pathway they wished to follow.