{"id":12477,"date":"2024-02-05T19:04:20","date_gmt":"2024-02-05T19:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/?p=12477"},"modified":"2024-02-05T19:04:20","modified_gmt":"2024-02-05T19:04:20","slug":"piano-competition-raises-questions-gender-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/2024\/02\/05\/piano-competition-raises-questions-gender-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"Piano Com\u00adpetition Raises Questions About Gender Balance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/02\/Gender-balance-1.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"678\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Fiona Sinclair, chief executive of the Leeds International Piano Com\u00adpetition, has spoken to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2024\/feb\/03\/sexism-bias-top-female-pianists-classical-music\">Observer<\/a> about some enlightening reasons why female pianists are not competing on equal footing with men in the industry.<\/p>\n<p>In her interview, Sinclair cited evidence that lends empirical weight to the anecdotal experiences of countless women whose careers are stifled not by lack of skill but by a persistent gender bias.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">Female pianists represent less than a quarter (23%) of career pianists, although gender distribution in conservatoires is an equal split.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">Recent top international piano competitions saw only 18% female winners.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">UK data reveals just 20% of piano recitals or concertos and 19% of recordings feature women.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">Out of 20 piano soloists at the last BBC Proms, only two were female.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Making a change<\/h3>\n<p>The Leeds International Piano Com\u00adpetition is addressing the issue by making changes to how they make programming decisions.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">The Leeds International Piano Competition has introduced &#8220;blind&#8221; pre-selection rounds and bias training for jurors.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">A new award at the Leeds competition celebrates outstanding performances of music by female composers.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">The BBC Proms&#8217; latest seasons have begun to spotlight female talent with a commitment to increasing diversity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Zoom out<\/h3>\n<p>The data suggest the issue is also affecting opera.<\/p>\n<p>A recent study in <a href=\"https:\/\/theviolinchannel.com\/study-on-11-major-u-s-opera-companies-shows-gender-disparity\/\">October 2023<\/a> on 11 major U.S. opera companies highlighted significant gender disparities in creative roles from 2005 to 2021. Men dominated roles such as conducting (95%), directing (85%), and design positions, with women significantly underrepresented.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, the Washington National Opera, under a female artistic director, demonstrated higher rates of female participation, indicating positive change when deliberate efforts are made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fiona Sinclair, chief executive of the Leeds International Piano Com\u00adpetition, shares new data which suggests why female pianists are not competing on equal footing with men in the industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":12480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[360,2,270,87],"tags":[389,388],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/02\/Gender-balance-1.gif","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12477"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12482,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12477\/revisions\/12482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12477"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}