A quota for women conductors?

A quota for women conductors?

News

norman lebrecht

August 24, 2021

The German conductor Anja Bihlmaier takes up her first job as music director at the Residentie Orchestra in The Hague this weekend.

Bihlmaier, 42, tells local media:

‘In Germany, female conductors are extremely scarce. As a student I was the only one. Then it is almost impossible to find a job. Here (in the Netherlands) they are much further along, and in Scandinavia there are even gender quotas. I think that’s a complicated discussion; no one wants to be a quota woman. But maybe it’s necessary.’

Is that really the case at orchestras in Scandinavia?

Comments

  • Gustavo says:

    Well, not all young women will become well-payed top models for various reasons.

    We need to accept that there is injustice underlying almost any professional development.

    Many careers are based on pure coincidence rather than on a master plan or outstanding talent.

    • HugoPreuss says:

      I am a professor at a pretty good university. Of course I worked my ass off for many years, but so did plenty of other people. Talent and hard work are a prerequisite for any success, but I have no illusions of grandeur: mostly it was pure luck which lead to my current job. Presumably this is similar for a lot of people.

      • Paul Dawson says:

        In my late teens, I encountered a quote from Vonnegut: “I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”

        50+ years on, that has proved to be more true than I could ever have envisaged at the time.

      • Sue Sonata Form says:

        And the harder you worked the ‘luckier’ you got.

      • Emil says:

        And in many cases, the accidents fall according to predetermined patterns…such as conductors being largely male.

    • Hilary says:

      True.
      However, I think it can be engineered that opportunities/access is equal at the crucial formative years. This would be principally via education.
      Not all primary +secondary schools in the U.K. have an acceptable standard music department which can’t help in this regard.

  • Paul Dawson says:

    “… no one wants to be a quota woman. But maybe it’s necessary.”

    A beautifully succinct expression of the problem. Anyone labelled as “a quota woman” early in her career is going to face an uphill struggle to achieve credibility.

  • Phillipe says:

    Very sorry, but this statement is utter nonsense in my eyes.
    Young female conductors have gained an immense advantage over their male colleagues.
    Everywhere they are provided with opportunities and jobs that equally (or in some cases more) qualified men can only dream of.
    Ask agents working in the field.
    The same counts for conductors checking other diversity boxes.
    Yes, more diversity and gender equality is an important step forward, but the way it is pushed as an agenda at the moment does harm the integrity of a job, whose problem has always been that it is mostly judged by people with no expertise.
    Quotas would be the dawn of conducting as a profession taken seriously, which one could well argue has started already…
    Just my opinion.

  • Derek H says:

    I don’t know if there are quotas in Scandinavia but I think they are a bad idea anywhere.

    I believe any job should be earned on merit, ability and suitability (yes, I know that is a can of worms). However, everybody should have equal rights, whoever or whatever they are, and should be given the opportunity to apply or audition etc.

    Obviously, there is luck and “being in the right place and time” which comes into it, but things are definitely improving.

    It is probably impossible to find out for conductors specifically, but it would be interesting to know the breakdown of new appointments, in recent years, where it is the FIRST PERMANENT appointment for an individual.

    • Patricia says:

      No one has the ‘right’ to a conducting postiion. Or the principal oboe. Auditions are one thing – insisting on the job because one is female is another. If you want to be guaranteed a position, start your own orchestra. It has been known.

      • Sue Sonata Form says:

        But what if you’re oh, so entitled?

        • Amos says:

          Being oh, so entitled is similar to being oh, so ignorant, neither is constructive. The difference in this case is that the former is irrelevant to the discussion but the latter is on display regularly.

  • Peter B says:

    For as long as I can remember I’ve heard that quotas are the wrong approach. Yet for as long as I can remember the right approach doesn’t seem to work. So I suggest we try the wrong approach for a while and see if civilisation really ends.

  • Gustavo says:

    We need blind-folded conducting competitions using a jury equally made up of females, males and sexually diverse humans of all ages and races.

    • BRUCEB says:

      ^ and YOU should be the head of it!

      • Gustavo says:

        I would need to be elected by a steering committee equally made up of females, males and sexually diverse humans of all ages and races.

        And so on, and so forth.

    • Sue Sonata Form says:

      Or you could all just wear uniforms, as they did for decades in one huge nation. That would make things ‘equal’. Or the USSR where everybody had a job and nobody was doing anything. And if you complained/dissented you were cancelled and sent to a gulag. Oh, wait…

      • Amos says:

        So once again the syllogism that the logical alternative to ending discrimination is totalitarianism therefore let’s keep the status quo. Just pretend you are back in the warmth of 1930’s Germany.

  • Fred Funk says:

    Does it really matter? She’s gonna conduct Finlandia at some point, with a chorus. So there will be bad entrances from the violas AND the singers. The gender of the conductor won’t change this.

  • Kolb Slaw says:

    Or maybe it’s just a matter of having enough talent and aptitude. Stop the invasion.

  • I think we should have a quota for women conductors,and a quota for black conductors would also be fair,likewise a quota for Asian conductors, yes we should have quota systems for everything and talent should not be allowed to interfere.

  • Karl says:

    Clarence Thomas is against affirmative action because its stigmatizing effects put him at a huge disadvantage when he was trying to find work as a lawyer. Won’t quotas for women do that same thing? Many will assume that any quota woman got her degree and job based on reverse discrimination and not talent.

    • Amos says:

      I would urge you find a less comprised public figure to serve as your champion. Justice Thomas deplores affirmative action until confronted with personal behavior that could have led to civil or criminal prosecution and then claimed his accusers were engaged in racial stereotyping and profiling. The intervening years have demonstrated that he is a seriously troubled individual.

  • Sue Sonata Form says:

    Quota women? Now that has a somewhat attractive ring to it.

  • V says:

    I have heard of orchestras, particularly in Sweden that have gender quotas for conductors. Helsingborg Symphony is one, I believe.

    I have also had one male conductor friend (that I know of) that was told that they might have a gig, and then later told that they wouldn’t have it as management have told them that they needed to have a female conductor.

  • debuschubertussy says:

    Why not ask Marin Alsop what she thinks of this issue

    • Amos says:

      I would add to the list JoAnn Falletta, someone who has held multiple MD positions and has been MD of what I think is regarded as an excellent regional orchestra. Would a white male with similar training, experience and reviews (including recordings) have been considered for the next level position? Perhaps Ms. Falletta prefers her career path but I suspect she has been slighted.

    • John Borstlap says:

      But wouldn’t she be prejudiced? She is a woman, after all.

      So, we need to ask a conducting male. But no, because…

      Conclusion: we will never know since we cannot ask a truly neutral party.

      • Amos says:

        She can’t be objective about the issue? You underestimate her to the same degree you overestimate yourself.

        • John Borstlap says:

          Yes, I also get enough of those so-called jokes that force you to think whether you’ve to laugh or to get angry.

          Sally

          • Amos says:

            I would suggest that regrettably comments suggesting a tendency toward condescension, arrogance and pedanticism are not meant as jokes. Stating, without knowing the individual, that a mature adult, male or female, is incapable of making an objective evaluation of a situation simply because it might have affected them demonstrates all of the above.

  • Manfred Rüpsel says:

    Creating quotas will open the door for mediocrity which there is already enough. Selection should be done on talent alone, be it male or female (or trans).

  • Marie says:

    As a Scandinavian I will add that to my knowledge there are no real quotas but there is a rising focus on gender equality and a balance- and yes, maybe locally even quotas. But not as a political decision. I think it would be wonderful if quotas were not necessary, but I recently heard a woman with a top job in finance say that she had been against quotas for years, thinking that it was a question of businesses just getting used to women being equal players but nothing much has changed and there was still not gender equality and she was now pro quotas.

    Sometimes change needs a little help. At least for a while. And to say that’ll will automatically lead to mediocrity and that you can’t recruit based on talent with quotas seems narrow minded to me – and actually a bit sexist to be honest since we then assume that there isn’t an adequate amount of female talent out there…

  • Franz1975 says:

    Women are not a rarity on the podium. I’d say that the percentage of new conductors joining the conducting profession (with a position in an orchestra or theatre, or a signed by an agency) that are women, is much higher than the percentage of conducting students in conservatoires who are women…

    … That leads me to think that either women are much better on the podium than men, or that there is positive discrimination.

    • John Borstlap says:

      The Torino Mandoline Orchestra which formerly consisted entirely of women, now is made-up of men, including 67% fugitives, to fulfil PC strategies, so: positive discrimination going wild. Board and subsidy bodies and the critics are very happy with the result except audiences since no player has as yet mastered the mandoline, so there are no longer any concerts, and this was already the case before corona. Let this be a warning for all symphony orchestras.

  • Anna-Lena B. says:

    Setting a quota for female conductors would be an insult to women as if it would mean that women are inferior to men as conductors that much that there needs to be a quota
    Shame on modern pseudo-feminist politics

    • John Borstlap says:

      There is a distinction between pseudo-feminist politics and genuine women liberation which means ignoring their gender. For many men, this is extremely difficult and feels like amorous suicide. Real feminism consists of liberating men from their darkest instincts, and since that is almost impossible we see overreactions everywhere.

  • Thomas says:

    Since women conductors are now being appointed left, right and centre, pretty soon we’ll be needing a minimum quota for MALE ones.

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