Mapping the Jazz Faculty Gender Gap

Jazz Times ^

[nickcarraway]

A new Berklee-sponsored study’s findings are ... not good.

Researcher Lara Pellegrinelli and students at The New School compiled data from more than 200 jazz education programs for the 2021-22 academic year. The study, which was published by the Berklee College of Music earlier this week, measures the imbalance of female-identified employment in higher education. The full report is available online.

The report — “Jazz Counts: Measuring the Jazz Faculty Gender Gap in Higher Education” — shows that out of more than 3,000 academic and staff positions, 15 percent were held by female-identified educators. That number decreased to eight percent for faculty focused on teaching an instrument, according to information from schools in 44 states and Washington, D.C.

“Until now, there has been almost no statistical data that allows us to measure the participation of female-identified artists in jazz,” said Pellegrinelli, who’s also reported on the music for a range of national outlets including JazzTimes. “I hope the leadership at institutions of higher learning will use the report to help create greater equity in the field.”

A few other notable pieces of information included in the study:

35 percent of schools have zero female-identified faculty members;

at institutions employing more than 30 faculty members, female-identified educators make up between six and 32 percent of staff;

13 percent of teachers are female-identified in composition, theory and improvisation courses, respectively; most female-identified faculty members hold adjunct positions.

Grammy-winning drummer Terri Lyne Carrington is the founder and artistic director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, the academic program that sponsored Pellegrinelli’s research. The program explicitly explores how equity can be reached within the jazz world and how gender bias manifests within that ecosystem.

She told JazzTimes that the results weren’t a surprise.

“It’s been willful negligence because the culture needs transformation — both in the performance aspect as well as in jazz education,” Carrington said. “Everybody thought it was OK for some reason. This is what actually boggles me.”

Carrington added that there’s still more work to do, and intends for the study to be updated in the future.

“I don’t blame or judge people for not having thought [about the issue] earlier,” she said. “But you might stop to think: The music itself will not reach its greatest potential without more equity between the people that are creating it.” JT

---

TOPICS: Education; Music/Entertainment; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: dei

[9YearLurker]

“Female-identified”, “female-identified”...

[dennisw]

All the time I come across Thomas Sowell quotations that are fake. They sound like something he would say. But you dig deeper and you find out that someone somewhere concocted it. Grok3 AI will expose them.

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

What about the Jazz native american and triggered feminist gaps! Clutch my pearls we have work to do.

And the Jazz normal guy that hates it to death chasm!

[HIDEK6]

By and large, women don’t have the correct attitude to play jazz.