Hidden Women: IWD 2021 and The Gender Pay Gap In The Music Industry #WomenToTheFront

Happy International Women’s Day.

Be kind to yourself, be proud of the strength you carry. This is the time to honour the vital role of women in history, by celebrating their incredible, multifaceted and dynamic achievements (both seen and unseen).

To mark the occasion, MARE will be making some comments on the gender pay gap in the music industry, and how women are periodically misrepresented and underrepresented in this way.

So let’s talk about it.

You see the successes of so many male artists and bands in the music industry. You witness their talents and never second guess their integrity - their creativity, you herald them for their achievements. The sad thing is, as many female creatives would agree, much of their own wisdom, mentorship, emotional and creative labour, guidance and work in the background goes completely unseen.

Many women in the industry love to create - and create to love. We are nurturers, sisters, lovers, mothers and everything in between and it is our life force. We love to aid our brothers and sisters and build each other up, for it is our nature. We want to pour ourselves into each other and nourish each other’s talents. We want to dedicate our time to see each other grow and do what we can to make that happen. Behind every great artist, every manager, every festival, every record label there are great women. I can tell you now, there is a creative woman who has worked herself to the bone and supported the industry in backing them all. So why isn’t she getting paid for it?

Simply put, there is a deeply rooted and historical lack of respect for women as leaders. If you look across the board, the demonisation of the female leader in the media has been universally omnipresent to this day. You only have to pick up the Daily Fail, as I like to call it, to read unfiltered banal misogyny at its finest. It’s funny but not so funny when you realise that a great deal of these cis white men have their talons deep into the heart of many great institutions that we love and cherish. Many of them are on the board of directors or are shareholders - these senior men that represent a bygone time are still very much in charge. But not for long. As Cher once said, “women are the real architects of society”; it is no surprise then that from this great potential and ability comes great envy and resentment for such raw, untempered power. Figures show on the official UK Government website that in 2021, Women are paid 31.5% less at Warner Music, 26% less at Sony Music and 44.5% less at Live Nation. It is enough to make ones blood boil when you consider the sheer number of women who even exist within its sphere. It’s not many. It shows us that the fight to maintain women’s voices in the industry though amassing gravitas, is still ongoing.

Disappointing, but not surprising.

Something to remember, at the best of times, these women won’t even be credited for their involvement. Oftentimes they don’t particularly care because it’s not about being recognised, it’s about making it happen. She does it for the devout love of music. She won’t even be seen, she won’t raise her voice to be heard because it does not matter. She gives free emotional labour and guidance and mentorship to those she loves most at no price. But the sad thing is we fail to own these simple accomplishments. We have been conditioned to accept the bare minimum and to even accept nothing. It is only in recent times that women have been given crumbs off the table and we are supposed to sit there and be grateful for it. I personally have felt the obligation to create MARE, this multimedia platform, solely to defy that purpose. To give opportunities to the unseen, diminished, underground creatives who deserve so much more. We need to build up our self worth in such a toxic ‘competition-driven’, almost narcissistic online culture that is all about the ‘next best thing’. Sadly people are discarded in this industry and forgotten just the same. We need to be paid for our time, because it is our most precious and finite possession.

We end up in these self imposed prisons of thought to ourselves that image is everything, when in fact it is not what you say that defines you. It is what you do. You cannot be told to hide or disappear. You cannot be bound by self-invented or external limitations. The sky is the limit when it comes to creativity. But as we know in such turbulent times it is so debilitating when you are isolated from those you love most that you lose sight of what is most important. I found that insofar as my own voice goes, it never appeared as important in this industry as it did until this month, where I experienced its near-silencing and belittling first hand. But that’s for another time.

Here’s to the strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we recognise them and raise them. May we not encourage them to give themselves away so freely. May we continuously encourage each other to respect ourselves and our boundaries. For it is within community that we will find strength in ourselves as individuals. Not superficial validation or manipulation from a man. We must give each other a helping hand if they need it, but we too need to give ourselves some love and respect, if we have emptied our own glass to fill another’s we are pouring ourselves further into an abyss. In such a period of intense isolation we forget that it is so easy to forget this assertion of boundaries for ourselves, as we are givers that crave connection and spiritual unity. Do not give yourself away so freely, because you must take care of yourself. To do this you may have to make some difficult choices for your own well-being. I know I have.

The visibility of women must not be questioned and it must not be patronised. Abusers and manipulators must be called out by their male friends AND female friends. We must not forget the power of social media in its destruction of the vile persons involved in the Burger Records scandal. We cannot allow women in the industry to be mistreated any longer and we should give credit when credit is due. It does not benefit you to enable this behaviour, because it is no longer being accepted. We have some fantastic organisations championing this movement, big shoutouts to @womeninctrl @womenthatrock and @womeninmusic.

Whether you are a male ally or a female champion in this movement. You must respect others, yourself and encourage others to do the same to support women in the music industry.

Because we had your back from the very beginning.

Besos

Alexandra