ABSTRACT
Gendering of students, gendering of academic and support roles, lack of female role models and masculine creative practices are key themes evidenced in empirical literature on higher music education practices. Issues of inequity in institutional practices in higher music education are mirrored in the gendered work of music industries. In this chapter, the author problematises and theorises both empirical and anecdotal evidence, circulating among professional musicians, of gendered practices in higher music education institutions and industry workplaces. The author argues that institutional leadership strategies are required to enable more equitable opportunity structures for women. The chapter presents a multiplicity of creativities, raising non-gendered aspirations other than those ascribed and mythologised by the accepted masculine canon of “great composers” and other dominating masculinities. The author puts forward a number of examples of good practice and provides pointers for individual or academic unit development. The author argues that revised institutional leadership strategies are the key to doing more than merely disrupting the pervasive and deeply entrenched imbalance of power in the social relations between men and women professional musicians.
