ABSTRACT
This chapter maps out core ideas, strategies, and conflicts in efforts to bring about gender equality in music as expressed in musical practice, policy, and research over the past 50 years and across geographical, cultural, and political contexts. The chapter also defines some tendencies in contemporary movements, drawing on empirical findings in music research and exemplified with ongoing efforts, mainly in Europe and North America. Systematic web searches were used to collect data from a broad variety of sources including organization websites, news media articles, and research reports. Informed by Michel Foucault’s ideas on discourse, power, and resistance, the analysis shows that strategies vary along a spectrum which can be seen as protectional–confrontational, but also as introverted–extroverted. The author suggests that gender-equality efforts in music must continually self-reflect on how their discourses might create new forms of normative repression and control through problematic aspects of empowerment, space, and representation.
