female:pressure Calls For More Women In Electronic Music Events


eliane-radique

female:pressure – an international network of women in the fields of electronic music and digital art – is observing International Women’s Day (March 8) 2013 with a call for female representation in electronic music and digital art events.

They note:

The members of the female:pressure network operate within a seemingly progressive electronic music scene and its subcultures. However, we find that women are notoriously under-represented in the realms of contemporary music production and performance.

We have looked into statistics regarding festival line-ups, record label releases and the appearance of women in several top 100 lists. Nowadays, a 10% proportion of female artists can be considered above average.

We feel it is unacceptable in the 21st century that we can still end up being the only woman performing at a large festival.


The organization is calling on festival curators, sponsors, label owners, journalists to give more opportunities to women and to incorporate diversity that reflects the world. Given the prominent role women have played in electronic music history and in modern electronic music, 10% doesn’t cut it.

via female:pressure

 

101 thoughts on “female:pressure Calls For More Women In Electronic Music Events”

  1. Oh christ, not this again. It’s not about the gender representation….it’s about who makes the best music or has a new/innovative sound. Whether the artist is male or female does not matter, nor should it. Imogen Heap has no problem playing at some of the big festivals and events, because her sound is awesome and she utilizes technology in an innovative way. People like to see that. Thus, she is playing at the big events. But don’t press her about it, I’m sure she’s too busy making kickass music then going around bitching about how her gender isn’t represented enough among the boys. In fact, she could probably give a rat’s ass about who is making the music. Personally, I don’t care where or who the music comes from as long as it’s good.

    They dig their own grave when they say “Nowadays, a 10% proportion of female artists can be considered above average.”…..that’s the number that MUST increase if they want to see more “equality” in the scene. The whole point of electronic music these days is that anyone with enough drive, talent, and desire to be original can make it if they sound good enough…it doesn’t matter if you’re male, female, asian, american, latin, european, african, gay, straight, black, brown, white, red, yellow, catholic, mormon, jewish, muslim, short, tall, skinny, fat…..whatever. It’s about the music, not about who is writing/producing it or playing it out.

    If this group thinks that there should be more females in the scene, tell all those drunk party-harty girls I see at shows to cut the crap and get to the studio and try to make original stuff instead of going out to see people who have already done so.

    1. How do you explain that the top 100 dj list is always 100% guys, then?

      And just as bad, there’s hardly any black guys on it, which is BS. since beat mixing, scratching, techno music, raves – all those aspects of electronic music culture came direct from black DJs.

    2. Oh christ, not this again.
      “It’s just about the quality, it has nothing to do with sex, or jender, or whatyacallit”

      Well, Einstein, “quality” just HAPPENs to be defined very vaguely (or not at all), so that there is no objective measurement that says exactly when or why some music is more qualitative than some other.

      Thus it is a SUBJECTIVE measurement which — I hope you will recognize just by the plain word definitions here — is not applied equally across the board, and will allow for a certain LATITUDE or even — can I say it — arbitrariness, which just HAPPENS to not apply to female musicians, much of the time.

      And if you don’t recognize that, you might just be slightly below average intelligence, or perhaps willfully obtuse.

      Turd. Moron. No, I’ll go for Turd.

      *hugz*

    3. Do you really think it’s just a case of “men are making better music”? The fact that the difference in numbers between men and women is SO huge suggest it’s not just a case of “wimmin: make better tracks!”.

      Regardless of talent, women have a harder time networking and getting their music taken seriously by labels, clubs, potential collaborators etc. – especially if they’re not deemed attractive enough to be put in front of an audience.

      I’m studying sound production and there is a grand total of ONE female in my year. The rest quit because everyone else took the piss out of them. Until the culture surrounding this side of the industry changes, it’s going to repel plenty of talented women before they get very far.

      You can make great music, but no one will hear it if the right people don’t take you seriously because of your gender/race/sexuality/whatever.

  2. Are women actually under-represented? At least when it comes to electronic music, I wouldn’t say more than 10% of the performers are female. How many of your friends who make/buy/live music are female?

  3. That’s because women are supposed to be pretty, and good moms, and good at psychology ‘n stuff, and not to mention, good at tweaking MY knob, not knobs of a synthesizer or any other electronic device or vehicle for that matter.

    And now serious:
    It’s true, there is sexism and gender-roles, etc etc. My opinion is to ridicule it, instead of pretending it does not exist. Btw sexism is super retro and very hot right now !! 😛

  4. Scientists have recently located the so-called “synth geek” gene. Males are much more likely to have this gene than females. Females with this tendency are about as rare as males who have the “scrapbooking gene”. (this may sound better if spoken in a Nutty Professor voice) : )

  5. Tara Busch is among the most beatuiful people on the planet.
    Her Mellotron demo on youtube metls.
    Dreams are made from such women.

  6. wtf? dont wanna read this female brainwashed propaganda bullshift on a synth webpage.
    there is enough room for this whining stuff on other webpages!

  7. i think the website is a pretty cool idea and that some of the comments in this thread are lame.

    could you find a way to say what you have to say without falling back on ugly and misogynistic terms?

    it makes it difficult to find any way to engage in an actual discussion about this article OR ignore the comments you make.

    might be part of what the website is about in the first place.

    check it out, loads of cool artists in there.
    Square Root Of Evil is on there, she’s AWESOME.

    1. Please show me the “ugly and misogynistic terms” that have appeared in the comments before yours. I don’t see any.

      1. seriously? you don’t see the sexist comments? Though well-meaning, even falling back on the cliché’ of commenting on a woman’s beauty as a means of giving her value is sexist. I expect to get a lot of thumbs down for pointing this viewpoint out, and for once don’t mind.

        The real question is why do people get upset that a group is trying to support women overcome gender-bias. How does it negatively affect you so much? Why is it so threatening?

        Honestly, I think any and all encouragement is great, and if one organization wants to target a specific group, cool.

        1. In fairness, beauty provides an advantage for everyone, regardless of gender. Look at Justin Bieber or Steve Aoki. Both are moderately talented but nobody would call them musically innovative – and yet they are at the top pinnacle of the pop and dance music fields in terms of sheer popularity and ability to make money. Same thing with that DJ from Jersey Shore (Pauly D?); by all accounts he’s a useless DJ and gets bookings only because of his TV celebrity status, but it helps him a lot that he’s good looking. Chances are that he will make as much or more money from performing than a Grammy-winning artist such as Skrillex over the next few years, since Skrillex may be musically talented but he’s he’s not stereotypically good-looking.

          1. Ummm, you don’t imagine that being already invested in by major media conglomerates (aka having appeared in a tv show as a rather vacuous persona) has anything to do with DJ bookability?

            I just *know* marketing guys dream dirty dreams about you at night.(*)

            (*) Dirty, yes. Very dirty.

        2. That’s not what I said. I said I didn’t see the “ugly and misogynistic terms” specified by the commenter. Seems some people here can’t read and are hearing things that haven’t actually been said.

      2. Blaming the low number of women at electronic music events on “drunk party-harty girls” is pretty sexist and ignorant.

        Also – ‘harty’ isn’t a word.

  8. Its not just sexism. Online forums and meet ups for electronic mysicians tend to be vaguely homoerotic hangouts where guys brag about the size of their rig and debate/bully others about their gear choices. Not very attractive, guys!

    1. Hey Alissa, maybe the reason we do this isn’t because we’re trying to get your attention and trying to impress you. Maybe we just do this because we enjoy it.

      1. BS Detector –

        If you spend less time talking about your rig and more time actually doing something with it, women would be a lot more interested.

        Just sayin.

        3. You see nothing wrong in talking about a man’s ‘rig’ in a double meaning but I haven’t seen anyone here talk about a woman’s ‘rack’. Why do you feel comfortable enough to talk about men in this way? Anyhow, it’s not how big it is its what you do with it right? Well I’m doing pretty well with my ‘rig’ thanks 😀

          You’ve proved yourself to be sexist in a discussion on sexism no less. Well done.

          *Post rewritten in less offensive terms since admin deleted the original.

    2. That’s one of the lamest things I’ve ever heard, and more than a bit insulting. I have “rig size comparison” talks with my guy friends all the time because it’s INTERESTING.

    3. I love how you think that any group of men hanging out together and talking about things they are interested in is ‘vaguely homoerotic’. You seem to think we should be doing something else so as appear ‘attractive’ to you. Get over yourself Alissa 😀

    4. Online forums and electronic music attract a fair amount of amusical uncreative collectors AND a lot of locker room humor from men who seem sexually frustrated. It’s not attractive in the sense that it’s not appealing to stick around and learn creative skills.

      The original comment coulda been phrased better as so as not to hurt guys feelings. 🙂 Men are very much emotionally weaker than women, it’s why they make such a big show out of being tough, so as to not expose themselves.

      It’s telling that some men felt so vulnerable they had to attempt to discredit or argue with the main post. What would happen if they just ignored it? Women would overtake electronic music?

  9. In my experience women are under represented in electronic music because they simple aren’t interested in making it. Its really that simple. There’s nothing stopping women from making music at all – no barriers whatsoever. If anything they’re more likely to get more encouragement compared to us guys.

    1. That’s been my experience. My wife has a degree in electronic engineering, has spent years managing large teams at a software company, likes electronic music and tolerates my signal processing obsessions, but she has zero interest in using it herself. After being an electronic musician for ~15 years, I’ve only met one woman who was into producing, and she was already a working musician who sang and played blues guitar. And even she preferred composition to parameter-tweaking, preferring to dial up a nice-sounding patch than to interact with the controls while a sequence was playing. She was a much more skilled musician, but less interested in the sound-mangling side.

  11. Maybe Women should think about actually doing something with Synths, rather than just being DJs. No one cares if a woman or a man produces a track. There’s NO sexism in this field. Some of our greatest synthesists were women, but who cares about history’s greatest synthesists? No one. Doesn’t matter if they’re a man or a woman; NO ONE CARES. Except us.

    And for the record, neither Kate Bush nor Goldfrapp are “synthesists”. They’re just singers and producers.

  12. It might be a good start, in recognising the contribution of women in the field of electronic music, if you were to at least identify the women whose images you use at the top of this post.

    1. If you don’t recognize those women, you REALLY need to learn about electronic music. Every single one of them is an major figure.

  14. Alison Goldfrapp gets my vote with that cheeky hint of tape recorder. Daphne Oram is just too blatant with both reels on show.

  15. If women really are under represented in this field then women need to start making more music, perhaps female:pressure can make women do it. I am certain no-one whether male, female, trans or whatever else on this forum/scene discriminates when it comes to good music or quality sound design.

    There is a simple fact that has not been pointed out yet and that is female:pressure’s music is neither original or good; they make music for simpletons. Turgid disco sounds, look on you tube.

    1. It’s hard for me to buy into female:pressure’s argument here because electronic music is fundamentally less strongly gendered than most other genres in the first place – there’s a far higher percentage of instrumental work than any other field except perhaps classical music. If a female artist sings or raps, listeners know as soon soon as her voice appears on the track and people who dislike female musicians for reasons of taste or sexism will reject the work.

      But with instrumental electronic music, who knows anything about gender unless the artist chooses to draw attention to it? You can call yourself some abstract name, upload your tunes to YouTube, Soundcloud, etc. and nobody will have any idea whether you’re male or female. You don’t have to get the approval of a label manager or whoever to build an audience. If your music appeals to people you will get views/listens in proportion to the number of people that enjoy it. If you hear something good you know that you like it when you hear it, you don’t need to know about the gender/ethnicity/sexuality/politics/hairstyle of the artist to decide whether you like it or not.

      Now, this is obviously not the case if you want to promote yourself under your given name that’s obviously female, like Amanda Palmer, or that expresses your femininity like Female Pressure – sexist people will know in advance and never give your music a listen (even though they’ll sometimes be wrong – isn’t there a male remix artist that goes by the name of Girl Power?). But likewise, male artists that advertise their gender may also be limiting their audience by turning off people who are uninterested in either men or artists who promote themselves as individuals. Electronic music seems to attract quite a lot of introverted people who record under obscure names by comparison to pop, rock, and rap where a songwriter’s personality is more prominent (which is sort of unavoidable if you make music with lyrics).

      The promotion issue does matter because if you want to make a living form your music then it’s easier to do so by promoting yourself, and promoting yourself involves revealing who you are to some degree. If you make a video of yourself performing then people may react to the sort of person they see and sexism/racism comes back into the picture. You can make abstract videos that don’t promote the artist in particular, but it’s a fact of human psychology (and marketing) that people are most interested in other people and so you will sell more CDs/downloads/concert tickets is people know who you are than if you are some mysterious figure who keeps your identity a secret to avoid bias. so that’s potentially a problem…

      …but we can’t tell to what degree it’s a problem from the Female Pressure research. In the document on their website they provide a bunch of statistics showing that women are under-represented in electronic music, but nothing that might tell us why. It might be that promoters and label managers do have a bias against female artists, but they didn’t survey any, nor did they survey female artists to ask whether they had been treated differently before or after an industry gatekeeper became aware of the artist’s gender. It might also be (as suggested above) that women don’t really enjoy fiddling with synths, samplers, sequencers (and other devices that begin with the letter s) to the same degree as men; conversely, when I hear the word ‘songwriter’ I have a mental stereotype of a girl with an acoustic guitar and likewise the phrase ‘pop singer’ makes me think of a female artist.

      Such stereotypes are annoying if you’re a female rocker or rapper that finds it harder to enter your chosen genre, but that also applies to burly guys with beards who want to sing pop ballads. To some degree, label owners and promoters are going to go with ‘more of the same’ in any genre because they are in the business of making money and the general public tends to spend money on more of the same. But because so much electronic music is instrumental and so many electronic artists are semi- or completely anonymous, these preconceptions don’t seem to matter as much to the audience for electronic music. Look at promotional materials (posters, t-shirts, tickets, flyers) for electronic artists, and they rarely feature pictures of the artists; it’s usually the name of the artist surrounded by some kind of futuristic, technological, or psychedelic artwork. 99.9% of successful electronic music artists can walk down the street without being recognized and bothered by fans, because most people neither know nor care what the people behind their favorite dance music look like.

      It seems to me that although promoters and label owners may not be doing anything in particular to help women be more popular; they’re not putting up any particular barriers either, and the barriers to building an audience is lower for women in electronic music than in any other genre. If industry gatekeepers are putting up barriers then I would certainly be against that, and it would be worth making noise about. But if not, then i think the best way to get heard is to make cool music and put it where people are likely to come across it.

      1. Good post, but why is it so long? Seriously. You do want people to read it, right? People just scroll past long posts, as I did with yours when I reached the 3rd paragraph and realised there were 4 more to go.

  16. So many sexists comments here. I didn’t expect this among people I suppose they know about the history of electronic music. I know a lot of females interested in electronic music, not only as listeners but as musicians into synths. You have a few of them in http://www.femmusic.com, also in a Facebook page called Women in Electronic Music, several musicians organisations or simply individuals that you can find in Internet. The problem is the association with “good look” and “possibility of success”.

  17. Fully agree, it is about quality rather than what you are. I listen to a lot of “female” electronic such as CoseyvFanni Tutti, AC Marias, Diamanda Galas, Marsheaux, miss Kittin, Miranda Sex Garden, Client, Billie Ray Martin, Peach, Delphine Coma, Laureen Simpson etc etc… Not because they are women, but brcause i like the
    ir work.

  18. While women are very under-represented in the electronic music scene, they make up many of the most notable artists in electronic music history.

    The most notable theremin players have all been women. The first electronic music soundtrack – Bebe Barron. The pioneer of the synthesizer – Wendy Carlos. The most important electronic theme for TV – Delia Derbyshire. The first great commercial sound designer – Suzanne Ciani. The first great “synth score” – Wendy Carlos’s Clockwork Orange. And that’s just scratching the surface.

    It takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. In 30 years, will the work of today’s popular male electronic artists hold up to the test of time as well as the work of these women?

    2. Women definitely excel at playing theremin. They’re damn good at it and I’m sure there are a few disgruntled male theremin players out there grinding their teeth in anger. Maybe this is a stereotypical male trait but I don’t give two hoots about how they feel about it, they just need to become better at what they do and then maybe the world of theremin performers will have a more balanced male-female ratio. Until then the women are doing a good job so I’m not losing sleep over it.

  19. Female:Pressure isn’t discussing the lack of women making music, I know many of those. The issue is the under representation at events, all major music festivals have a disappointing ratio of men to women.

    1. If 10% of music-makers are women, and 10% of the performers in major music festivals are women, where exactly is the under-representation? The real question is: why is there only 10% music-making women?

      1. Probably because there are other more fun things to do. As much as I love making electronic music and as amazing as it may seem there are other fun things to do as well. Women *on average* are a lot more social than men so, you know, maybe a lot of them are actually outdoors interacting with other people rather than obsessing over the latest VST softsynth and arguing with strangers about it on KVR. That’s a lot healthier in my opinion.

        Proportionally there are a lot of good female electronic musicians, there are just less female electronic musicians overall. Or there are a lot of bad male electronic musicians and a lot less bad female electronic musicians. But only because there are a lot more male electronic musicians. At the end of the day it’s up to the individual to learn to do whatever they do well, and then broadcast the results to the world in some way. Playing festivals is a plus if you like that kind of thing, but again the motivation has got to come from the individual. It’s not my fault you didn’t get to play at the festival and I don’t really want to hear anyone moaning about it unless they’ve put in the effort to try and get booked.

    1. As do the men. Everyone is trying to get booked. And most fail.

      I’m sure that there are a lot of female electronic musicians who are trying very hard to get booked. It just seems that not all of them are trying very hard. If I see evidence that an equal number of men and women EMs are approaching these events and the men are still booked in larger numbers then of course I’d believe there was some kind of bias going on. As it is now, I’m not convinced it isn’t down to people not putting the effort in. You may be but not everyone does, there is no shortage of slack, lazy musicians out there.

  22. “wendy carlos” was a trans gender he started life as a male.
    or actual females to consider would be imogen heap and little boots og and lady gaga too!

  24. I was taught to open doors for women – to err on the side of politeness.

    Seems like that concept is lost on x0x, BS Detector and a lot of others.

    Why not open doors for a few female electronic music artists, when you have the opportunity? It’s pretty clear that they are under-represented, bringing different perspectives to music makes things more interesting and being inclusive is just the right thing to do.

  25. The opportunity hasn’t yet arisen, but of course I would given the chance and the right circumstances.

    Having a wide variety of perspectives and types of input is great but I question who’s responsibility it is to see that people get involved. My point of view is that people need to step up and get involved themselves, it’s not up to me, even if I think the world would be a better place for it. Do it yourself. It’s 2013. You have the best music making tools ever made available to electronic musicians: you have more choice than ever and some of the options are very affordable. You have the internet to find labels, social media to network and chat with like minded folk and arrange gigs. And if you don’t want someone to publish your music you can do it yourself on Bandcamp or Soundcloud. In short you have no excuses, no-one does. You live in a time of amazing opportunity so there is no reason that any group of people should be underrepresented. I’m still not going to open doors for you just because a group you belong to is underrepresented: that’s a privilege I reserve for friends and strangers who’s music I think is very, very good. Make some very, very good music and I might open a door for you.

  27. The level of “dumb” in this thread is astounding considering how many of those that consider themselves electronic musicians believe they are somehow morally and socially advanced. Stick to talking about the merits of ladder filters and stop talking about shit you can’t even understand. Or better yet, read a book once in a while. I hear it’s good for your brain.

    1. As long as the noise to signal ratio isn’t too high, I encourage everyone on synthtopia to make whatever dumb comments they think are worthwhile contributions to the discussion.

      If something is truly vile, it can always be downvoted, but fortunately it is still accessible so that you can find out what it was that people hated so much.

  28. That site is a cool idea, despite some of the links being dead. I hope some promoters/bookers check it out, it feels like most music scenes are too closely connected, and really lacking in people randomly seeking out artists they haven’t ever met before. As evidenced by some of the comments here…

    For what it’s worth, I’ve seen a lot more women performing at noise/experimental/diy type gigs than dance music gigs. Those also tend to have more of a nerdy/quiet/casual conversation kind of crowd, among everybody, not just modular synth guys. So it’s cool that those styles are colliding a bit more lately, and hopefully it will mix up the kinds of personality types that show up…

  30. The mothers and grand mothers of all those women worked so hard for equality. The fight is not over as we see a lot of women not being paid as men.
    Sadly this Occupy-My-Rack-and-patch-cords movement has already failed just by the way they described the Us Vs Them mentality. the worse part is, it is not even a female producers versus male producers. “Nowadays, a 10% proportion of female artists can be considered above average.” This is telling me they don’t like most of female producers. Wow! That was sad to read.

    If they do have proof organizers are pushing them away from performing live because of their sex, by all mean share it with the whole world. But IF the goal is to bully people coming to see you play live and you suck, no amount of political correctness and fairness will save your a…, no matter how many racks you bring on stage. The surprising thing is what i just wrote is equally true for dude too.

    Saying that “Nowadays, a 10% proportion of female artists can be considered above average” is evil too and the worse part ,for you anyway, is you are not even aware of that. because this goes against everything the suffragettes worked so hard for: equal opportunity, not equal justice.

    Bring the proof males are keeping you from performing and post the links on twtr.

    Bash me away.

      1. Unlike politics and business, there is no one standing in your way when it comes to making music. I actually believe if 10% of performers at electronic music events are female, then thats positive discrimination (an ironic term in this instance) as the reality is probably closer to 2%, maybe less.

        As soon as a female electronic artist of merit turns up they are publicised far more than make equivalents. Why, because its more unique and therefore easier to make a story out of, not harder.

        Grimes is a perfect example. She happens to be brilliant, well deserving of her attention. I heard one track and bought all 3 albums. A forward thinking electronic artist who doesn’t rely on loops to make her music interesting, unlike most (male) DJ producers.

        But if u think there are endless brilliant female electronic artists out there being ignored, you’re delusional. In my 25 years of making electronic music I’ve met I under 10 women with an interest in synths, and only one who made quality electronic music.

        10%? A total fantasy figure.

        1. Sorry, I had to downvote you, because you said that Grimes was a good artist, and therefore made your opinion invalid.

  31. Nice one Synthopia, you deleted my post. Didn’t even give the readers the opportunity to give me a low rating. I was being ironic.

    Have some balls. You started this bullshit thread, so have the balls to publish what people say about it. Yes, balls, I believe this synth website, and the other big one, is run by men. Unsurprisingly.

    1. Oh, there we go, my original comment has now been re-posted above my last. Seems someone changed their mind. Waiting for the low comment rating, hoping its high. Don’t let me down.

    1. Brian – if you’ve got cacheing enabled in your browser, your browser won’t display a new version of the page unless you either refresh it or the page time to live ‘expires’.

      I checked for your original comment and it was trashed appropriately. Please keep your comments on topic and constructive.

      1. Synthopia, thanks for explaining. The first part of my post was deliberately misoginistic, intended to provoke a response as I find this whole discussion is basically retarded, extremely offensive to men who treat women as their equals, and should have the piss taken out of it. It’s people behind these ideas that stand in the way if equality as they basically want a skewed version of equality, not the reality. I would say that 2% or less of electronic musicians and DJs are female, not ONE single female electronic artist can be considered influential (Kate Bush isn’t electronic, Wendy Carlos was born a man), so 10% is a massive over representation.

        So my joke about women not featuring at festivals because they refuse to get them out for the lads was deliberately provocative, but was intended to demonstrate how ridiculous this discussion is. I think any normal, srlf confident female would see the irony, anyone else is taking PC a little too far and needs a sense of humour.

        However, as you hadn’t deleted the post about playing with ‘knobs’ etc from someone else I assumed there was freedom of speech going on here. Not like I used the Cnunt word, just t*its.

        I did follow up my obviously ridiculous joke with some valid comments, which proved i was joking, however I suppose it’s unfair to think you have the time to edit out the bits you don’t like. Thats fair enough, but maybe you finding my joke offensive, and me merely trying to use humour to demonstrate a point, is where the USA/European divide becomes apparent.

        Although the brilliant ‘Comedy Roasting’ in an American invention!

  33. Hey! I’m a woman Electronica artist! Oh, also a someone Elderly one. Thats “two” strikes against me! I actually found much greater bias when trying to get into local bands & jams. The age problem was much worse than the gender issue.
    That’s how I got started with Ableton and computer music… because no one would jam with me in realtime!
    I have been going to Electro-Music festival in Huguenot NY for 4 years. Only performed in the last 2. I am really a beginner. Everyone has been really friendly & willing to help a Newbie. Perhaps more than if I was a guy? I don’t know…. 🙂 Certainly I am much more noticeable….
    Seriously, there’s no barrier to a girl doing electronica, as long as she has money to buy the Gear… and someone to teach/help her! (Oh, also she needs musical ability of course.) Also, you need to be a serious Geek. As in, spending numerous weekend nights alone with your Synths rather than partying or dating.
    I think it is more socially acceptable for a guy to be a “geek”. (But only the shallowest people care about being socially acceptable.) I will definitely admit that society has expectations. If I had a husband, I would have to worry about getting grief from him concerning Money and Time spent on synths….but I spose guys have the same problem with their wives.
    One way in which I feel different from the electronica men: I have no background in electronics, engineering or computers. I just love the music and am more focused on composition than on circuitry. I like this QUOTE: “And even she preferred composition to parameter-tweaking, preferring to dial up a nice-sounding patch than to interact with the controls while a sequence was playing. She was a much more skilled musician, but less interested in the sound-mangling side.”
    Also, I am more interested in visual art than many of the guys. I believe beautiful visuals are an absolute essential for a good Electronica performance, and the time that others spend tweaking parameters, I am working on Visuals. Maybe it’s that “right vs. Left brain” thing?

    1. Well said. It is also very interesting your comment on ageism. It is a far worse discrimination because nobody seems to care about it yet. Being older, especially if you are not pretty/handsome, shuts more doors than your gender.

      1. Yeah, ageism is strange, though also kind of fascinating with abstract or experimental music, because it makes you question what the function of musical events really is and how our society works. I think there can be a lot of egos, insecurities, and friend networks involved both with people booking shows, and with crowds who are young and looking to meet other young people, and therefore assume that anyone old is also there to meet young people. On the other hand, if you are old, show up at a lot of shows, and obviously aren’t a creep, people might assume you’re somebody famous they haven’t heard of instead.

        I wouldn’t say there’s any general pattern with having a background in computers and electronics… I make music on computers because I’m 26 and I grew up with them, but all of my geeky knowledge is very specifically focused on realizing musical ideas. There’s also a lot of silly hype over hardware that many younger people get caught up in, and I think it can be kind of a black hole where they get obsessed with the technical problem solving at the expense of music.

  34. Being a woman heavily in to electronic dance music myself I know from my own experience that it is difficult to become part of the “young mens network”. Although I have expert knowledge in music production and own a ( partly analog ) dreamstudio most dj s can only dream of I still think that the majority of aspiring young dj s with only a laptop and a cracked copy of Live are being taken very serious immediately where I have to convince people that it is really true that someone like me can own all this synthstuff and even knows how to use them in quality techno productions. Asking to listen to my music is another diifficult hurdle to take. I often thought of creating a male alter ego to avoid all the prejudices. …..
    and yes I also know about the latest hot releases …..pffff some remarks here prove the necessity of this website

    1. Please post your music so we can hear it. When you say “young mens network” are you a much older person? If so could it be more about your age rather then your sex? I am not buying female pressure argument of women be under represented because of their sex. I think people will dig your music if its good no matter what. I tend to see moves like this counter productive and often times feel attack as a males and before any of of start getting things twisted. I will make it clear that I have a 4 your old girl who I expose synths and music to religiously. I can make the argument that she being a black child and a female will be a BIG hurdle for her. I wont do that however, because making her think that will create unnecessary hurdles in itself.

      1. KNS and MIdi G asked me to send a link to some of my work. I produce techno and also the visuals that go with my music.
        some examples:
        http://www.vimeo.com/2381509
        http://www.vimeo.com/860300

        After rereading my previous post I realised that I I had an off day. It made no sense at all. Sorry for that.
        Indeed perhaps age is of more influence then gender.
        Most of the time I don t feel that negative about being a woman in the electronic music scene.
        KNS ..do continue like that with your daughter. 🙂

        1. YES! Excellent music Jane. S. Thanks much for sharing.

          I saw the other video as well about integration Analog and Digital in Logic 9. WOW You have a beautiful studio. Nice work. 🙂

          1. thnx. 🙂 always good to end up with positive energy…:-) hope your girl will give you many musical presents in the future.

    1. I checked and your comment was caught in error by the spam filter. I fixed that.

      We get 150,000+ attempted spam comments per month. We use a system called Akismet to help filter out spam from the comments and it 99.96% accurate.

      With a post like this, though, with discussions of gender/sex, it’s not surprising that it has flagged a few in error.

  38. out of curiosity i went to female:pressure’s webpage. i dont want to search things or use drop down boxes!!! need more pictures AND MUSIC. the site needs more ZAZZ is all im saying

  39. Who the hell is stopping them? Been around electronic music for 20 + years now… If anything women get MORE attention because of their gender. Look at Maya Jane Cole for instance… mediocre DJ at best. Plenty of talented ladies in the scene, but maybe you should just except the fact that less women are into it than men.

  40. In my music collection:
    Doris Norton
    Daphne Oram
    Delia Derbyshire
    Ellen Allien
    Xosar
    Miss Kittin
    Magda
    Steffi
    Barbara Morgenstern
    Holly Herndon
    For me they are great artists who make music like no other.

    Getting music out there is hard for everyone, if you have something to say musically find your audience and the rest will eventually fall into place. Yes there is sexism, just like in many other facets of life but self-segregation leaves almost as much of a bad taste. Art is about individuality so I am always wary of grouping people together with something as arbitrary as gender.

  44. as someone mentioned earlier, it’s about supporting Femme Artists, & REALLY, there are a heap of Superlative Femmes in Electronic music, & if you need any more proof of them being sorely under-represented at major venues just look at EDC line-ups over the past cupla years, virtually zero Femmes, & even those that DID play were given lower billings than a majority of the boys, a huge proportion of whom were total wimp untalented unoriginal wastes of equipment & yet were ONLY because of gender given better set spots than ACTUALLY Talented Femmes, AND actually GOT spots there that SHOULD have gone to Femmes that got NO gigs, tip, there’s a prevailing “culture” of patriarchaic victorian english misogyny inherent in electronic for the past few decades, more every year, & it sucks the big one, a “boys own” club where any “paint-by-leggo” male gets gigs & cudos for sniffing the farts of the “rich boys club” & Femmes get the “left-over” spots, & where Femmes are actively disparaged, dismissed & ignored as a matter of course. A Femme-only Line-up Festival would be a good idea, i know where i’d prefer to be, HeartBeats & Waves beat leggo-block metronomes everytime.

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