On 24 Jul 2005 at 2:18, Christopher Smith wrote: > On Jul 23, 2005, at 6:02 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > > I remember reading somewhere recently about the change in orchestras > > where someone entirely attributed the increasing hiring of women > > entirely to the institution of blind auditions 10 or 15 years ago. > > There was a particularly striking passage by one orchestra manager > > who said that he couldn't imagine that he'd been prejudiced against > > women, but once the blind auditions were in place, his orchestra > > started hiring more women as a matter of course, and he was forced > > to conclude that he and his hiring colleagues were, indeed, tacitly > > prejudiced against women. > > Isn't it possible that at least part of the reason was because more > qualified female candidates were auditioning? . . .
I don't know. What I do know is that the person who was quoted attributed most of the change to the blind auditions. He said (if I'm remembering correctly) that without the blind auditions, the big orchestras would not have nearly as many women in them as they do now. > . . . Not only would they be > more encouraged to audition by the new blind hiring rules, but they > had reaped the benefits of the previous decade or two of feminist > activism affecting their education and mindset. When I was starting my > university schooling, the male music students outnumbered the females > by about 2 to 1. These days at the same school, those proportions are > approximately reversed. In the part-time orchestra I play in > regularly, women are fully 80% of the membership. It's completely > normal that more women are going to be hired now than before. I don't know. All I know is that somebody in the business attributed the rising number of women in major orchestras almost entirely to blind auditions. And when I was at Oberlin in the early 80s, the M/F ratio was roughly 50/50 (though in some instruments different than others, of course -- few women brass players, for instance), particularly in the violin section (which is by far the majority of the positions in any orchestra). -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
