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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2020
In September 2015, ABC Classic set a target of 5 per cent women composers on air as the beginning of a push to combat serious gender imbalance in the works broadcast on the network. This target has gradually changed broadcast culture, encouraging content makers to champion women's music and allowing for major programming events and goals, and it has led to an increase of women composers broadcast from 2.2 per cent in 2015 to 9.9 per cent in the 2018/19 reporting cycle. This article examines our journey over this time, arguing for targets as a means to enact change and establish concrete outcomes. It explores the ways in which a target has encouraged us to consider gaps in the content offered along with new opportunities to present music by hitherto under-represented composers. It also reflects on the work ahead, acknowledging the ongoing importance of targets in moving towards better gender representation in classical music programming.
1 ABC Classic, ‘Monthly Content Report’, unpublished internal document, 2015. ABC Classic is a classical music radio station within the publicly funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Detailed information on the ABC and including editorial standards and legislative framework are available at https://about.abc.net.au/how-the-abc-is-run/. In 2018, the station changed its name from ABC Classic FM to ABC Classic in acknowledgement that audiences now listen across multiple platforms beyond the FM band.
2 This involved a concerted effort to draw physical albums featuring women composers already held at the ABC library into the network's database, thereby making them accessible for programming. The application of a ‘female composer’ metadata tag allowed the programming team to search specifically for these works.
3 ABC Classic currently has content targets of 50 per cent Australian Performance and 15 per cent Australian Composition. See Matthew Dewey, ‘ABC Classic Music Policy’, unpublished internal document, 2018.
4 ABC Classic, ‘About ABC Classic’, 2019. www.abc.net.au/classic/about/ (accessed September 26, 2019).
5 ABC Classic's website is www.abc.net.au/classic/.
6 Dewey, ‘ABC Classic Music Policy’.
7 For example, a programme made in Sydney and mailed to Adelaide would travel approximately 1,162 kilometres by plane.
8 Further information on the software is available at www.rcsaust.com/gselector/.
9 Jacqui Cheng, ‘Challenge: Women Are for Life, Not Just for International Women's Day’, 2019, www.wqxr.org/story/women-life-international-womens-day-2019-music-composer/ (accessed May 25, 2019).
10 AH, ‘BBC Radio 3 to Record Lost Female Composers to Address Classical Diversity’, 2016, www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2016/female-composers-classical-diversity (accessed May 25, 2019).
11 The Music Policy now reads: ‘ABC Classic recognises that there is a need to improve the representation of female composers in the traditionally male dominated field of classical music composition. The station has set a self-imposed 10% quota, aiming for 15–20% by 2020. We are steadily making progress towards this target, aiming for a gradual evolution of the station sound’; Dewey, ‘ABC Classic Music Policy’.
12 Matthew Dewey, ‘Missing: The Other Side of the Art’, 2018, www.abc.net.au/classic/features/missing:-the-other-side-of-the-art/9500290 (accessed May 23, 2019).
13 Liza Lim, ‘Luck, Grief, Hospitality – Rerouting Power Relationships in Music’, Keynote for ‘Women in the Creative Arts’ conference, ANU, 11 August 2017, pp. 4–5 and 12. Available at https://lizalimcomposer.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/1-final_lim_rerouting-power-anu-keynote.pdf (accessed August 30, 2019).
14 Cat Hope, ‘Stepping Aside: Gender Equality and Privilege in Recent Australian Music Culture’, 2017, www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/article/stepping-aside-gender-equality-and-privilege-in-recent-australian-music-culture (accessed September 11, 2019).
15 DONNE: Women in Music (www.drama-musica.com/TheBigList.html) provides a comprehensive list of women composers and links to the relevant Wikipedia pages; The Daffodil Perspective (https://thedaffodilperspective.com/recordings/) seeks to document newly released recordings; the Women's Philharmonic Advocacy (https://wophil.org/wphilrep/) presents all repertoire performed by the Women's Philharmonic (US) between 1980 and 2004.
16 The Higdon and Walpurgis operas were broadcast in one evening on 17 September 2017. The Saariaho has now been broadcast twice on ABC Classic: in concert from the MET on 8 January 2017 and on 8 March 2019 as part of International Women's Day programming.
17 These statistics are calculated from the works played on 8 March 2018 only.
18 Matthew Dewey, ‘ABC Classic Program Briefs’, unpublished internal document, 2019, p. 10.
19 Martin Buzacott, ‘Classically Curious: Dora Pejačević’, 2018, www.abc.net.au/classic/features/classically-curious:-dora-peja%C4%8Devi%C4%87/10378034 (accessed August 30, 2019).
20 Toby Chadd, ’Editorial: Finding New Favourites’, 2019, www.abc.net.au/classic/read-and-watch/music-reads/finding-new-music/10872610 (accessed August 30, 2019).
21 The music aired over the four days totalled 85 hrs, 04 mins, 28 secs.
22 Chadd, ‘Editorial: Finding New Favourites’.
23 GFK, ‘Radio Audience Measurement – Survey Summary Reports: Sydney, 27.08.2019’, www.gfk.com/en-au/insights/report/radio-audience-measurement-survey-summary-reports/ (accessed September 06, 2019); Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ‘ABC Classic Multiyear Audience Figures’, unpublished internal document, 2019.
24 The ‘Classic 100: Composer’ was decided by audience vote between April and May 2019, and was revealed on 8–9 June 2019. The female composers in the top 100 were Elena Kats-Chernin (16th), Hildegard von Bingen (33rd), Clara Schumann (62nd), Fanny Mendelssohn (83rd), Peggy Glanville-Hicks (90th) and Sally Whitwell (96th).