ABSTRACT
Women in Jazz is a neoliberal feminist brand that functions successfully for few successful individuals. This brand benefits profiteering organizations within the jazz scene, while maintaining a patriarchal hierarchy in the community. It does so by continuing to frame women as the exception, and in this case forcing them to become individual entrepreneurs in order to succeed in a scene that is built to exclude them. This thesis is documented with two case studies: Jazz at Lincoln Center (J@LC), and their previously annual Diet Coke Women in Jazz Festival; and The New York City Winter Jazz Fest (WJF) and their programming for gender, jazz and social justice. Each of the case studies reveals ties to neoliberalism and neoliberal feminism and documents the thesis that the brand Women in Jazz fails to support the social and perceptual changes needed towards gender equity in the jazz genre.
