In 2017, Sound and Music made our public pledge to achieve gender equality across all of our work with composers and artists, under the headline “50:50 by 2020”. Following our commitments, we have seen significant progress in the mission to improve, specifically on, the representation of those who identify as women on our programmes.
This can be attributed to the proactive work, activity and interventions which have included: reviewing the language and communications we use, creating specific opportunities for women and highlighting their contributions across of programmes, being transparent about our gender representation goals to our selection panels and asking them to take these into consideration during their decision making, and leading the national conversation around inequalities in new music.
We have also seen a marked improvement in representation of women on our programmes since the launch of our Fair Access Principles in 2019, our commitment to accelerate change by working collaboratively with the wider sector to address ongoing issues around inclusion, and to advocate for our collective responsibility to remove barriers. As of April 2021, 19 organisations are have signed up to these principles and a timeline to implement them.
At this stage, we forecast that we will reach our initial 50:50 goal by 2022, however this is by no means an end point, and we will continue to push for more gender representation within the organisation and the sector as a whole.
The next steps in our work will include reviewing the inter-sectional barriers that existing within new music and widening our insight analysis to better reflect those who identify as non-binary and minority genders.
Download the full infographic pdf here.
#IWD2021
International Women’s Day Poll with Music Hackspace
International Women’s Day 2020
International Women’s Day 2019
International Women’s Day 2018