ABSTRACT

Music is certainly one of women's oldest professions. In the eighth century, Jamila, an Arabian songstress, conducted the first touring orchestra of 50 female musicians who regularly made the pilgrimage from Medina to Mecca. The most common idea about gender in music is that women have been discriminated against. Women's overall attendance is higher for classical music and musicals. Female composers are found to earn statistically significantly less ceteris paribus than men. The classic autonomous unit is the rock band of usually four to five instrumentalists with singing who record their own compositions in a mode of production pioneered by the Beatles. The all-female jazz band has only been of limited success. Women musicians face the same problems as other women professionals: lack of child-care facilities within their workplace. Female rock musicians may wish to persevere with a career and children simultaneously rather than phasing their life-cycle activities.