Why Aren't There More Female ... X?

This was written to counteract a "why aren't there more female DJs?" thread on the Erol Alkan Forum, but it could just as well apply to almost any high profile role you don't see a lot of women in.

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Warning: this post is gonna contain a lot of gender stereotyping and personal observation. Like everything else posted on an internet messageboard, it's one person's opinion.

Yeah, you're right. It's frankly weird to me when I compare the large number of female DJs I know and see, at a grass roots level, with the relatively few that exist on the national level. (Or even just going out to small clubs that are not run by my mates.) It's really puzzling for me to attempt to reconcile these two sets of ratios.

I just think that there is more to it than Megadebt's assertion that sexism doesn't exist and it's because all female DJs are crap.

Maybe attributing it all to the Glass Ceiling is just as reductive. (After all, the Glass Ceiling in the corporate world is hugely complex, involving not just male gatekeepers, but also female expectations, the Mommy Track, women who pull the ladder up after themselves in order to maintain their novelty advantage, etc. etc.)

But... I'm interested in WHY things are like this.

1) I definitely think that VtN is on to something, in terms of the lack of role models, which is a self-reinforcing cycle. It's been shown in studies (look at that link that I posted back in the Finding Ada thing about Delia Derbyshire) that women do require female role models more than men do. (Why is this? I don't know, maybe it's just easier if you're a man, to find examples of men doing stuff already.) Women are just more likely to do something, if they see other women have done it. This is why female pioneers like Amelia Earhart, Ada Lovelace, Madame Curie, etc. *are* such touchstones to a lot of women. And maybe list threads like this are important, rather than being sort of female ghettos, if they make female realise there are a *lot* more women out there doing this than you'd think if you looked at the lineup of a superclub.

2) Another issue comes down to the difference that boys and girls are raised and socialised. Boys are trained from day one to promote themselves, to compete, to push themselves forward, to ask for stuff, and expect to get it. Girls are trained that being assertive, let alone competitive or aggressive, is to be "shrill" or even worse, to be "a bitch."

Myself, I find the way that a lot of these ground-level remix competitions and DJ battles and everything being played off like a sporting league to get an opening slot at Fabric or whatever - I find that really *alien* to my stereotypical female collaborative, community-building, gossiping knitting-circle way of thinking and being.

I have never sent out a mix tape to a club. I've never asked a stranger if I could come and play records at their club. I've only ever got gigs in one of two ways - 1) because people (even if they don't know I DJ) assume that because I'm an electronic musician, or a music journalist, I might just have some interesting records and know how to put them on or 2) In speaking to people who run clubs I know well and go to all the time, I've coyly suggested, hmm, wouldn't it be nice if I came and played some records here?

Now I don't think this experience is unique to myself. In speaking to loads of other women, we find again and again that promoting oneself is one of the hardest things to bring yourself to do. (And in my case, I found on other forums that the penalties for uppity women who attempt to promote themselves are much heavier and nastier than for other people.)

So perhaps that's the fault of us women, we need to learn to shout about ourselves more, the way that teenage boys do just completely naturally. (and accept the knocks, even when they do get nasty or personal or rapey.)

3) and this is where I'm going to get the shit. The gatekeeper issue.

You know the old dichotomy, "men act, women appear" ? Nowhere is this more true than in the entertainment industry, of which music and DJing is part.

Men are judged by their performance, their skills, their talents, their abilities.
Women are judged by their appearance, and their sexual desirability.

"But Boom!" I hear you protest, before I have even typed those words. "Women are just as bad as men - in fact, you are 1000 times worse, the way that you drool over Erol and his hands, hair, arse, etc."

But the difference is, I am not a gatekeeper. I have no power whatsoever over whether an attractive male musician is promoted or ignored. So long as the high-level gatekeepers in this world - the promoters who book clubs, the A&R people who run labels and sign artists, the features editors who decide what artists to cover in their magazines, and how to promote them - remain mostly men, male artists get picked according to their actions, and female artists according to their appearance.

So, of course, if you're too busy primping, preening, shaving, waxing, perming, bleaching, working out, applying make-up, styling your clothes, getting your nipples erect and artfully posing in pornographic promo shots, who on earth has time to remember to plug in their decks, let alone learn master the art of beatmatching?