Influential women in UK's Music Industry launch Moving The Needle
A group of key women in the UK music industry are launching an educational support group on this year’s International Women’s Day called Moving the Needle.
In accordance with IWD 2021’s #ChooseToChallenge mission to increase gender parity, MTN aims to shake things up in an industry in which only a third of women hold senior management roles in an industry which is worth an annual £5.2bn. According to UK Music Diversity Report from last October, Women in the music industry also earn just 73% of what men get paid; while bonuses are also 23% lower. Meanwhile, only 35% of women in the industry are aged 45+ which is actually lower than in 2018, at 39%; while only 2% of senior management roles are held by African or Afro-Caribbean women.
The not-for-profit initiative wants to encourage young women of all ethnicities and backgrounds to enter the industry, and support them through their entire career, via mentoring workshops, panels and debates. As MTN co-founder Jen Otter Bickerdike, the New Course Development & Support Manager at BIMM Institute, says, “I’ve never, ever had a mentor in the industry. There’s a real lack of support for women. When I left the label, no women were above me, which indicated there was no pathway. We hope to make a difference now as part of Moving the Needle.”
The group says it will also help to drive out ‘imposter syndrome’ and help build resilience. (“F.A.I.L stands for ‘first attempt in learning’”, they say.)
“If we want more women to make it in our industry, we need them in every niche and every level of seniority,” said Karen Emanuel, CEO of the Key Production Group, who also won the NatWest and Everywoman Awards in 2018. “In the late 1980s, someone told me that to join this industry, I’d have to start as a secretary. Well I never learned to type, and I’ve done pretty well without that skill by knowing my numbers. But I’m still not seeing enough women come in and rise to the top in the ‘nuts and bolts’ side of this business. It drives me crazy.”
Added the co-founder and CEO of Getahead, Jenni Cochrane, “It’s about education and opening gateways after Uni… Students we meet are blown away by the fact we are women who’ve reached such a senior level in music. That shouldn’t be the case.”
The other founders of Moving the Needle include Julie Weir, Label Head at Music for Nations, Sony Music; Síofra McComb, Director at Positive Subversion; and Silvia Montello, Founder and CEO of VoiceBox Consulting and Director of #remarQabl; and author, journalist, and New Course Development & Support Manager at BIMM Institute, Jen Otter Bickerdike.
“There are very few women in A&R (talent development) which means fewer females are signed to labels,” said Montello. “This in turn means fewer female artists enter the music industry talent pipeline. Due to unconscious bias, your average middle-class white male A&R guy is more likely to sign artists who are similar to him.”
Part of MTN’s remit will be telling young women at schools and colleges about the rich array of roles on offer. After all, as Weir says, “They may only know about the roles traditionally associated with women, such as PR and marketing.” Added Emanuel, “We need to bring young women into the ‘behind the scenes’ areas and ‘nuts and bolts’ roles such as mine, which are still predominantly male. At a recent conference I attended about distribution and manufacture of music, I calculated how many attendees were female: it was a miserly 5%!”
“There is not one black, female CEO or Chair of a UK music trade body,” said consultant and curator of The F-List, Vick Bain, who is on MTN’s advisory board. “Everyone in the industry should be helping in our mission. We want to feel proud that our dynamic industry is fair and diverse, and we’re prepared to make some noise to make this happen. We need people and organisations to join in our mission. The time is now!”