Women composers’ use of online communities of practice to build and support their careers
| Published date | 23 September 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-02-2018-0059 |
| Date | 23 September 2019 |
| Pages | 215-230 |
| Author | Sophie Hennekam,Sally Macarthur,Dawn Bennett,Cat Hope,Talisha Goh |
| Subject Matter | Hr & organizational behaviour,Global hrm |
Women composers’use of online
communities of practice to build
and support their careers
Sophie Hennekam
Management Department, Audencia Business School, Nantes, France
Sally Macarthur
Western Sydney University, Parramatta, Australia
Dawn Bennett
Curtin University, Bentley, Australia
Cat Hope
Monash University, Bandar Sunway, Malaysia, and
Talisha Goh
Edith Gowan University, Perth, Australia
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine women composers’use of online communities of practice
(CoP) to negotiate the traditionally masculine space of music composition while operating outside its
hierarchical structures.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors employed a mixed methods approach consisting of an
online survey (n¼225) followed by 27 semi-structured in-depth interviews with female composers to explore
the concept and use of CoP. Content analysis was used to analyze the survey responses and interpretative
phenomenological analysis was used to interpret respondents’lived experiences as relayed in the interviews.
Findings –The findings reveal that the online environment can be a supportive and safe space for female
composers to connect with others and find support, feedback and mentorship, increase their visibility and
develop career agency through learning and knowledge acquisition. CoP emerged as an alternative approach
to career development for practicing female music workers and as a tool which could circumvent some of the
enduring gendered challenges.
Originality/value –The findings suggest that online CoP can have a positive impact on the career
development and sustainability of women in male-dominated sectors such as composition.
Keywords Gender, Mixed methodologies, Communities of practice, Career progression,
Creative industries, Women composers
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Music composition is a highly gendered occupation. From the earliest times to the present
day, gender has played a role in inflecting the collective discourse of music history with a
narrative that has extolled the masterworks of male composers while making invisible or
incidental to that history the music of women. Yet, amidst this dominant discourse, female
composers have figured, sometimes prominently (Pendle, 2010).
Gender has thus played a role in constructing a duality in which two distinct histories are
traced: a dominant (male) history; and a counter ( female) history, the latter emerging from
research which had unearthed women’s music in the 1970s. However, despite the existence
of female composers, their contributions have tended to be excluded from the received
standard repertoire of performed musical works. This, we argue, is a phenomenon that Personnel Review
Vol. 49 No. 1, 2020
pp. 215-230
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-02-2018-0059
Received 15 February 2018
Revised 20 December 2018
4 June 2019
Accepted 8 June 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
This research has been partially supported by the Junior Professor Award awarded to the first author
from the Federation Nationale pour l’Enseignement de la Gestion des Entreprises (FNEGE) in France.
215
Women
composers’use
of online CoP
continues in the present day (Browning, 2016). We also suggest that it is against this
backdrop that female composers have found it necessary to develop strategies for
navigating the male-dominated profession of music composition.
Women composers have faced challenges throughout the history of music and their
resilience and ability to adapt to their circumstances have informed the decisions they have
made about their careers. Leslie and Catungal (2012), however, claim that “certain creative
occupations reproduce masculinist workplace cultures and are therefore potentially harmful
spaces for women”(p. 118). Given that western art music history is characterized by an
all-pervasive masculine narrative, we argue that composition is one such occupation.
The study reported here ad opted a mixed methods des ign and featured an
internationally distributed, online survey which elicited responses from 225 participants
(Phase 1) followed in Phase 2 by 27 in-depth interviews. The survey revealed women’s use of
the online environment to overcome challenges related to learning and networking. The 27
semi-structured in-depth interviews enabled us to explore women’s use of communities of
practice (CoPs) as a tool to navigate the male-dominated space of composition and enhance
career development. Our methodological approach helped us to study the prevalence of
themes and simultaneously gather rich insights into the lived experiences of women
composers. We posed the following research question:
RQ1. How can online CoP help women composers build and support their careers?
The study contributes to the literature on women composers’careers with a new
understanding about how online CoPs are used to overcome perceived career barriers, as
learning opportunities and to access mentorship and support. The findings expose an
alternative space which might be used to circumvent some of the enduring challenges
within creative industries work. Our contribution is twofold. First, we outline h ow online
CoPs help women composers develop their careers by distinguishing four different w ays
of using CoPs in overcoming challenges. Second, we contribute to theory by showing
that CoPs, coupled with individual agency, are helpful for career development in
male-dominated sectors.
Literature review
Challenges for female composers
The legacy of music as a predominantly male tradition has given rise to and perpetuated the
gender stereotype that women do not “measure up”to the high aesthetic standards of their
male counterparts. This, in turn, as Samuel (1994, p. xiv) points out, has led to “a cultural
antipathy towards the concept of the female creative artist.”This attitudinal antipathy has
fed into the statistical representation of female composers which, as noted by Parsons and
Ravenscroft (2016, p. 4), shows that they are a significant minority, comprising only
approximately 20 percent of the world’s composers.
Women perceive that they face different challenges to men (Conor et al., 2015). Such
challenges include, among others, interference with caring responsibilities (Banks and
Milestone, 2011), sexual harassment (Hennekam and Bennett, 2017a) and marginalization
through the active denial of their expertise by male workers (Banks and Milestone, 2011).
The present study focused on two specific challenges: learning opportunities and
male-dominated networks.
The first challenge concerns learning opportunities that arise from questioning and from
making mistakes. Allowance for mistakes arguably improves one’s performance (Gully et al.,
2002) as well as one’s learning and self-efficacy(Lorenzet et al., 2005). Sel f-efficacy –the belief
in one’s ability to complete a specific task or reach a goal successfully –is developed
enactively (by doing), vicariously (by watching) and through encouragement by others
(Bandura, 1977). Being allowed to make mistakes as one learns implies that one
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