we get to play because we are womxn*
March 2023, revisited in January 2025, will be revisited in 2027 an so on and so forth. Maybe.
*I use woman, womxn, femme, female, girl, queer interchangeably to refer to cis and trans women unless specified.
Lately I’ve been getting quite some comments from musician colleagues that are at the end of their studies or in an early stage of professionalization on the topic of women in the music scene.
I keep hearing simplistic, unnuanced phrases such as: “the fact that *she* is a woman plays to her advantage”, “*she* gets visibility because she is a girl”, “*she* gets all the jobs because she is a woman” or “these days you are not programmed if you’re not a young woman”. I also heard about my project that “your band is more marketable because there are women in it” (1). Women, cis-women, because trans and non-binary people are still very excluded and much more discriminated against, hear this type of comments all the time, they see their music become invisible behind their image, their gender. I used to wonder how women that are established in the industry dealt or deal with this. Do they ignore it? Maybe that’s why there are so many of them refusing to speak about gender, so it doesn’t overtake who they are. Totally understandable. Because maybe, each femme experience is unique and deserves to be treated as such. But maybe they just follow their intuition and their inner urge to create. Maybe, and only maybe, they make unbelievable efforts to get over all those comments and violences to keep working, and the consequence is that they prove over and over again that they are where they are (2) because they are great musicians, composers, arrangers, producers, creators.
When someone states (publicly and privately) “_fill in with a successful(3) female/queer musician_ has visibility/gets all the gigs/get the grants/gets the teaching job/is the jury of X competition because she is a woman”, the message that is being sent is that the only value this person and their creation have is linked to their gender. It takes away their agency, their uniqueness, it’s actually dehumanising. The consequence is that for younger womxn that are not yet professional, are studying, don’t have the tools, the knowledge, just started music or don’t have the approval of music institutions (or the means to be in those institutions) and a long etcetera; the consequence is that all these womxn are denied of legitimacy to do and to be. They get the idea that what they’re doing does not belong to them, that the value of what they do doesn’t lie in what they do by itself and what they are themselves, but in how they are perceived because of the body they are born in.
I’m going to focus on the Brussels jazz scene and will be talking about the few women that have more visibility in the scene, that keep being underestimated in their art and performance because of their gender. Most of these women had access to higher musical education, meaning they had the economical resources. They also had the needed psychological support and probably an upbringing that made them strong enough to stay in a very difficult environment despite the fact of being continuously questioned. They also have strong personalities that allow them to keep going, and for granted a very deep and nourished love and passion for music. An urge to express themselves through music. I’m so happy to witness their power and hear their creation. But they are still a minority compared to the amount of men in the scene. Go check the amazing work Scivias(4) is doing to observe and give numbers to this.
It’s (sadly) normal that there are less women in the higher sphere of the scene, even though in reality there are quite a lot of them. The amount of women I see dropping out or experiencing crazy impostor syndrome or insecurities or the many other reasons that make them quit (5) is terrifying. We are just facing the tendency to point out and underestimate the work of the few that are killing it and getting in the spotlight. Luckily enough, there’s a bunch of other great women making great music. The gender gap is slowly decreasing and that’s a wonderful fact. But for this phenomenon to keep going in this direction we need to quit this profoundly misogynistic idea that women are put in advance because of their gender(6).
The point I want to make is around the phrase and idea “*X woman musician* gets visibility because she is a woman”. These types of statements reduce all the work, resources, time, capacity, effort, musical personality, character, artistry and vision to their gender. It invisibilizes the fact that all the women making music have an extra layer to deal with on top of the fact that being a musician is already a difficult choice. It sends the message to younger girls that if they ever get a gig or are accepted in conservatory (quick and easy examples) it’s not because they are actually good, it’s because they are pretty girls. It reinforces the identity and confidence insecurities every musician deals with throughout their learning and growing process. There are many reasons why there are less women the more advanced the professional state is. One of them is the amount of violence and psychological conditioning little and young girls get through their lives. I’m not going to get into details about systemic violence against women and gender minorities because that would take me way too long and the numbers are out there on the internet at your own personal account to go check it out.
I want to believe we can get to transcend the gender of a musician in the future, that the gender identity of the person playing in front of us won’t matter. The reality today is that gender still affects how every individual behaves and is perceived, so it is urgent to talk about it. To claim out loud the artistry of every single musician, to make it clear that when a woman gets to play a lot is because she plays good and she has all the capacities, that she owns the place she is taking. Not to make “women in jazz” a different section in the music, as if it was a different game. I was quite surprised during an interview. He asked “Do you have male musician references?”. What is that question? This question implies that, because I belong to a gender minority, I have the body of a woman, I’m an outspoken feminist; I’m automatically in the box of “female jazz”, and I will never refer to any male musician, I will never be inspired by that. We’re all making music. Enough minimizing the artistry of musicians to their gender. We need referents, we need visibility. We need to send the message to all younger kids that they own the space they take and that they are free to be who they are and do what they do. The body we have shouldn’t determine what we do or who we are.
Maybe great musicians I see around me like Louise van den Heuvel or Adèle Viret, like the band Juicy, had the strength to be so perseverant in their work and so good at what they do, not only because they were passionate about it, but to fight against the comments they had to keep hearing on how they were gaining space because of being women. In any case, lucky us that we have such great artists and many others to refer to and be inspired by, so in the future it indeed won’t matter in which gender flow every person is.
In the meantime, let’s talk about it and open the debate, let’s build together instead of putting down people and perpetuating discriminatory beliefs.
Notes:
(1) Today is not the case anymore, I’m the only non-cis-man person in the band, and I think that “sells” even better than having more parity, because then I’m individualised and the “focus” is easier to keep, it’s a perfect isolating formula, that’s been used a lot: comersialising one single woman. Maybe it comes from the need to keep feeding competition? To create a flat narrative and definition on what “a woman is”, making it almost impossible of that endless loop.
(2) Article on meritocracy and more:https://www.van-outernational.com/lewis-en/. Courtesy of Piergiorgo Pirro.
(3) Mainstream definition of success.
(5) https://www.cairn.info/revue-travail-genre-et-societes-2008-1-page-87.htm#no2
(6) It’s actually getting better and better every year, there’s already a difference between the time I wrote this first (2023) and today (2025).
