Article: "Each for Equal Every Day", by Gabriella Di Laccio

Each for Equal Every Day
by Gabriella Di Laccio
It’s 8th March 2020: today we celebrate 2 years since the launch of the project DONNE, Women in Music on IWD 2018. The past two years have been a fascinating educational and inspirational journey for me. Never in a million years I would have expected the worldwide response that this project would generate.

As I look back at the initial video I posted two years ago 

I can feel that enthusiasm all over again, the eagerness to do my part, the excitement to start engaging with people with the strong intention of celebrating the incredible achievements of women composers, raising awareness about inspirational stories, amazing music and some fantastic role models who should be part of our history books. I can also remember the frightening feeling of making the website go ‘live’ in case everything would turn out to be a disaster. 

I am incredibly grateful for everything that I have learned through this project as an artist and as a person and I can tell you that I learned A LOT!

Most of all I learned how easy it is to bring diversity to concert programmes, how incredibly open the audiences are when listening to new repertoire, how fascinating it is to discover so much wonderful music and have the chance to share it with people worldwide when I perform.

Sadly, I was also reminded of the prejudice that is still so very present in our world and that to fight unconscious bias requires daily effort, a very loud voice and a LOT of resilience.

The official theme for IWD 2020 is #EachForEqual and as I write these words I ask myself “When will these words become a real part of our reality?”

Since the beginning of the month I have received over 40 invitations for conferences and talks about women and I have lost count of how many concerts featuring works by women happening this weekend, and this is only in London. 


Please don’t get me wrong as I totally understand the importance of today as we continue to celebrate women’s achievements in all fields while calling for gender equality.

But to create a massive podium for women on a single day is not enough: women need equality every day! And I would replace the word ‘women’ by BAME, LGBTQ, people with disabilities and any other minority group that is not fairly represented. They all need equality and inclusion. Every day!

Raising awareness for equality, inclusion and diversity can’t be a special celebration that happens once a year. These are daily actions that we should all take as individuals to challenge stereotypes, fight prejudice and make sure that we are creating a society where any person can see themselves in any position.

So, if you really want to celebrate International Women’s Day and support women in music:
take action!

● Write to radio stations and ask for more diverse music to be played;

● Write to your local orchestras, choirs and reassure them that you would be opened to hear new repertoire;

●  If you are a musician, make a strong point in researching more woks written by women to be included in your repertoire;

● If you are an organization take a conscious decision in being part of the ones who are creating real change;

●  Don’t wait for the 8th of March each year to think about gender equality.

Let's not repeat history, let's not have another century talking about the "forgotten women" because if they are forgotten, we are the ones who forgot them. And we are the ones who can make a difference.

Equality will not happen without each one if us doing our part. And in this moment the hashtag #EachForEqual can really be the answer. 

Each for Equal, Each for Diversity, Each for Inclusion. Not only today – but everyday!

Article: "On a Fair Representation of Women Composers", by Eric Ruijssenaars

On a Fair Representation of Women Composers
By Eric Ruijssenaars
Women composers are vastly underrepresented and underrated, and still also sadly unknown. It is generally assumed that there are few, or at least relatively few. This is of course a crucial question, when demanding a fair representation.
What could and should be our goal? What is a fair representation? What can we, women composers and their supporters, demand, in the concert halls, on classical radio channels and in the newspapers? 

The numbers
To try to answer this question we must look at the numbers of female and male composers. In the case of women composers that number quest can only begin with Aaron Cohen’s International Encyclopedia of Women Composers. In the second edition of this work, published in 1987, he got to more than 6000.

The importance of this book can hardly be overstated, but a closer look reveals that it must be far from complete. Cohen did his international research in a time when that was enormously difficult. There was no internet. Very little research had been done, worldwide, on which he could rely. It’s impossible to say how many he did not find.
Apart from that, it necessarily omits all the composers born after about 1965. That’s a giant amount meanwhile, still quite rapidly growing.
To put it otherwise, it is simply impossible to get to a complete list (let alone getting an idea of the number of women who published their works anonymously or under a male pseudonym). The further one gets researching women composers, the more the ‘end’ gets out of sight. The number of women composers is infinite.

A short history 
While it was never really made easy for women composers, the situation became only disastrous when the 33 rpm long play record was introduced in the 1950s. Classical music was introduced to many people, but the LP’s had 0% women composers. That’s how several generations grew up believing there weren’t any. We are still left with the remnants of it.  

It wasn’t only in classical music that women were erased from the history books. Only now we are hearing the stories of many overlooked excellent women in all walks of life.  There have always been women composers. On this DONNE365 blog we could earlier present a work from the 8th century, apparently the oldest surviving music by a woman. It’s important to be aware of this very long tradition too.

Conclusion
It’s shocking that, still, quite close to half of classical music gets little chance because it is composed by women. It’s a mystery too, knowing how good they are. Most of all it is a gross injustice, which must be fought against. Destroying the myth that there have only been few women composers is crucial in this struggle for a fair representation, because in reality there is no end to them. It’s fair therefore to demand nothing less than 50%.

Eric Ruijssenaars 
Email: ericruijssenaars@hotmail.com