GineersNow Engineering Magazine January 2017 Issue No 011

38 ISSUE NO. 001 • MARK ZUCKERBERG
Source: femalemusiciansonline.com
Women in Audio
Engineering
are Still
Undermined
Only 5 per cent of people who work in the
production of music, television, news and film
are women.
Source: House Musica
Have you noticed any female sound or audio
engineers in the music industry? Is audio
engineering so biased that it can not accept
female engineers in the industry? Remember
the Album of the Year winner Taylor Swift’s
acceptance speech during the 58th annual
Grammy Awards in February? If you don’t, here is
an excerpt, “There are going to be people along
the way who try to undercut your success or take
credit for your accomplishments or your fame. But
if you just focus on the work, [someday] you will
look around and you will know it was you and the
people who love you who put you there. And that
will be the greatest feeling in the world.”
A few may ask, “what about it?” Well, if you didn’t
notice, at the time she was making the speech
about female empowerment, she is surrounded
by an all-male crowd of music producers. Not
a single woman is up on stage to support her
ideals. But what appeared was not entirely the
case. The success of the award-winning album
“1989” was because of 19 people other than
Swift, two of which are women: Imogen Heap
and Laura Sisk. Both women were unable to go
behind Swift during the ceremony, but had made
significant contributions behind the scenes.
This is a sad reflection though, that women in
music production are still undermined. In an
industry where males are dominant, the women’s
capacity to take charge is questioned.
The
number
of women,
too, keeps
on going down
largely because of
the discrimination, if not
indifference.
Audio recording studios do
not even bother counting women
in their league because they seem
to be ‘not around.’ But there’s one, the
Women’s Audio Mission, a non-profit dedicated to
supporting women in audio production, which has
website that presents a statistic of only 5 per cent
of people who work in the production of music,
television, news and film are women. If that is the
only statistic we can find about women in music
production, then it’s time to make the necessary
changes to give women equal opportunities in
such field.