‘Mothering the artist’

Abstract

Drawing on Joan Acker’s notion of the ideal worker (1990) and Karen Ashcraft’s notion of the ‘glass slipper’ (2013), this paper investigates the organising practices that gender the occupation of artist manager and the music industry, and how women artist managers construct an identity in an occupation that is tailored on a male ideal manager, made to fit a man’s shoe. Empirically, we draw on thirteen semi-structured interviews with nine women artist managers, two women former artist managers, and two women former students of Music Management. In line with existing literature, our findings show that the Flemish music industry is organised around practices that reflect hegemonic masculinity, and that women managers mimic many of these practices to fit the ideal manager, and, although they see the gender inequality, they do not challenge it. At the same time, they construct an occupational identity by reframing stereotypical feminine competences as indispensable for being a good manager. By making a business case for these competences, they, however, paradoxically also reproduce those same notions of gender that they aim to overcome.

“Timeless” rock masculinities: understanding the gendered dimension of an annual Belgian radio music poll

“…The repeated association of rock culture with men has also resulted in the configuration of an idealized rock masculinity (Crider 2014;Leonard 2007;Railton 2001;Jacqueline Warwick 2015). Inspired by Connell's work on masculinities (2005), several scholars (Pauwke Berkers and Merel Eeckelaer 2014;Crider 2014;Francisca Mullens and Patrizia Zanoni 2019;Schippers 2002) used Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity to describe this pattern of rock masculinity. Connell (2005; provided a theory on gender relations that identified multiple patterns of masculinity that have hierarchical relationships with one another.…”

“…The music industry is no different, characterized by an "overwhelming and entrenched inequality" (Strong and Sarah Raine 2019, 1). To this day, many producers, managers, and other industry workers are men (Leonard 2016;Mullens and Zanoni 2019;Strong and Raine 2019;Whiteley 2000). This disparity has consequences for women aspiring to a professional career in the music industry.…”

“…This disparity has consequences for women aspiring to a professional career in the music industry. Women in the music industry have had to adapt to masculinist modes and homosocial environments of working while negotiating the gendered assumptions co-workers had about the women's competencies, status, and ambitions (Leonard 2016;Mullens and Zanoni 2019).…”