Title : Why women in Australia's music industry are waiting for a generation of men to retire
link : Why women in Australia's music industry are waiting for a generation of men to retire
Why women in Australia's music industry are waiting for a generation of men to retire
For all their successes, the four talented musicians of alt-country band All Our Exes Live In Texas share experiences common to many women in the Australian music industry — they have endured sexism on an almost daily basis.
Since forming in 2013, they have won an ARIA award (best blues and roots album last year for their debut record When We Fall), performed on a Kesha single, played at massive US music convention SXSW, and opened for Midnight Oil, Passenger, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, and even The Backstreet Boys.
Individually, Elana Stone, Hannah Crofts, Georgia Mooney and Katie Wighton studied music at university and have enjoyed solid and occasionally award-winning solo careers.
Now they are part of a growing number of women in the Australian music industry standing up against sexism.
"Before the #MeToo movement [sexism] was something [female musicians] talked with each other about a lot," Crofts said.
"I was surprised at how many male friends in the music industry said 'oh my God … I didn't know this was going on'."
The sexism experienced by the members of All Our Exes Live In Texas and their female friends in the industry runs the gamut from sexual assaults and uninvited touching, to crude comments and being judged solely on their looks rather than their music.
It has come from teachers, fellow musicians, sound engineers, industry professionals and even fans.
'This is my job and my career and my workplace'
Crofts, who sings and play ukulele in the band, shared a story about an incident involving a popular group — which she chose not to name — who had been introduced to the band with the idea of touring together.
"We were sitting in the hotel lobby and they came in and they were so drunk," she said.
"One of them came over and he sat so close to me that his leg was on top of my leg — so he was pinning me down where I was — and he said to me 'You're a fooking bitch' and I said 'What?'" Crofts recalled.
"I was so surprised. And he goes 'You're a fooking sexy bitch'.
"Separately to that they'd made a comment saying they were going to sit in the front rows of our shows so they could look up our skirts."
Crofts was rescued by one of her bandmates and they left, but the next morning the other band acted as if nothing had happened.
"It puts you in this awful place," she said.
"We're both musicians here, we're both trying to be professionals and do business — this is my job and my career and my workplace.
"But that's the crap you have to deal with, where you have to say to someone 'It's not okay that you said that', and then say to a manager 'No, we don't want to go on tour because of this'."
The boys' club
Stone, who won the National Jazz Award in 2005, said she had a teacher who was "renowned for being pretty disgusting [who made it] his personal mission" to sabotage her career even after she left the school.
"He'd go around to other musicians and tell them stuff about me … because he had a personal vendetta against me, because I wasn't attracted to him or I wouldn't play up to him or whatever the thing was that was stroking his ego.
"He did it to several female students. He assaulted them sexually as well. I was just lucky that didn't happen to me."
Singer/mandolinist Mooney related similar accounts of going to the university and "having the people in authority and teachers ply you with alcohol and feel you up".
The band's vocalist/guitarist Wighton said these incidents contributed to why the ratio of boys and girls studying music was fairly even, but there was a huge disparity in the ratio of female to males doing music full-time.
"I know for me the music industry for a long time was a massive boys' club and it was a bit of a door closed because I got intimidated," Wighton said.
Mooney said so much of the sexism they encountered was in the day-to-day experiences of being a musician, such as sound engineers talking to them "like you've never used a mic stand before".
"[Then there are] promoters that bring out all the artists we're interested in touring with, but the way they act around us is to be handsy and … making lewd jokes and just being generally crude," she said.
"And there's a point of thinking 'If I stand up for myself and make an enemy of this person, do I then also lose the opportunity to play at this festival?'
"To be honest, there's a generation of men in the music industry that I'm quite happy for them to finally retire."
Just as bad out in the crowd
But the problem also extends off the stage and out in the audience.
"I want it to be really stressed that women deal with being touched and spoken to in a lewd way every day," Wighton said.
Such interactions come after almost every gig, where men touch the band members or grab them around the waist or drape an arm around their shoulders.
"That's a massive invasion of my personal space … because generally speaking men are stronger and more physically dominating, so that's quite a scary thing to have happen," Wighton said.
"And as a woman you're taught to smile and not make a fuss."
Men need to stand up and speak
Wighton said the rise of the #MeToo movement had helped highlight a wide range of issues.
"There's sometimes an assumption we're lucky because we're an all-female band and … we're in the spotlight or we're getting this show [because of this movement]," she said.
"[It] speaks to a lack of understanding for the dedication and time and effort and energy we have put into our individual careers and our career together.
"We've all had solo careers, we've all gone to university, we've all studied music — not that that makes you better than someone who hasn't — but it's years of your life that you dedicate [to music].
"When men come up and say 'Oh, you guys are pretty good' in this shocked way, it's as if to say 'I assumed because you're an all-girl band, you're shit'."
Crofts said the rise of the #MeToo movement had led to interesting conversations with "a lot of really wonderful men who are working in the industry who weren't aware this was happening".
"A really big [change that needs to happen] is men communicating with each other more … about different experiences they'd had and how they can change," she said.
"A lot of people in the #MeToo movement have given examples of being in a workplace where someone will say something sexist towards the woman — and I think we've all had [this] experience — and there will be men in the room who look pretty uncomfortable, but they're not speaking up [even though] they don't think that thing.
"They're not agreeing with the person, but they're also not having a conversation where they say 'Oh mate … it was a bit shit that you said that to someone'."
A changing tide
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There is still a long way to go, according to the members of All Our Exes Live In Texas, but they are already seeing some change.
Stone said she had noticed an increasing number of female acts on festival bills, and more women working in the industry in recent years.
"It will have a trickle-down effect on young women and young girls," she said.
"We see a lot of young girls at our shows, and they stand at the front and you can see they're like sponges just absorbing this idea that they could do this.
"It's important to have role models in the industry."
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