PHOTO : GRANT MARTIN
SAMANTHA SLATTERY ( FAR LEFT ) MODERATING A WOMEN IN MUSIC PANEL AT CMW 2016
CM : It seems there are more women in high-level positions at the non-profit music associations in Canada than at the labels and other for-profit companies . I can think of , for example , Caroline Rioux as president of the CMRRA , Amy Terrill as EVP of Music Canada , Doris Tay as VP of distribution at Re : Sound , and there are four women in VP roles at SOCAN . Am I correct in thinking there are more women in prominent roles on the association side of the industry than on the label and company side ?
SS : One hundred per cent , I think you ’ re absolutely right . I don ’ t have the numbers in front of me , but to your point and thinking anecdotally about who you know and where women are succeeding , the MIAs [ music industry associations ], hands down , have got a much better culture for equality and work-life balance . Maybe because they ’ re NGOs , it makes it a little less challenging to have those balances than private companies . There have been so many changes in the record industry that everyone is really having to fight for their profit streams and their money , so to speak , so you ’ re often having to do the job of three or four people at these companies now where you didn ’ t 10 or 15 years ago .
So I think that is also partly why you ’ re seeing that . Women , as I mentioned , are sort of stepping out of a lot of these roles around their late-30s or early-40s because they ’ re looking for balance and I think the MIAs are an excellent and healthy part of the culture . And I think that a lot of the forprofits , just by the nature of the industry ’ s challenges right now overall , are making it really hard for women to succeed because the demands are such that there really isn ’ t any balance . It ’ s that way for women and men , but I think the women get hit a bit
harder in those scenarios .
And in the different sectors , like we noted , production and engineering is shockingly low ; it ’ s like five per cent female . With artist agents it ’ s the same thing ; it ’ s incredibly low , and promoters are very , very low , but then marketing and PR are very , very high .
CM : Once we ’ ve identified the problems , how do we move forward on a policy level ?
SS : I think because we have our granting system we ’ re actually in a lucky position in Canada where our policies can have a tremendous impact because there is a lot of economic decision making made at the policy level in Canada , whereas in the U . S ., they don ’ t have that “ lever ” that they can affect .
In Australia and a number of other regions , the way that they issue some of their grant money or most of their grant money is that there is a gender balance requirement . I believe it ’ s between 40 and 60 per cent division . So it could be 50 / 50 or it could be 45 / 55 , but that one half goes to males and one half goes to females . I know they ’ re starting to look at that in the Canadian film industry where the grants are being allocated based on gender in an effort to try to balance that out a little bit , especially for investing in that next generation of talent or entrepreneurs . I think that would be a really incredible policy we could affect here in Canada . Even just starting a grant or a separate stream that could grow female musicians and talent and entrepreneurs and businesses would be a huge one on a policy level that would be wonderful and have a tremendous impact .
CM : Like women on the business side of the industry , are female musicians facing unique or worse challenges compared to male musicians ?
SS : This is quite anecdotal because we tend to skew more towards the professional side of things , but just working in the industry and knowing the sheer amount of female musicians that I know , I think that they face a lot more overt misogyny . In businesses , people temper it a little bit more , even if that ’ s where their thinking is . They don ’ t feel like they can say it out loud or be quite so overt with it . I think that on the musician side , they face more outward discrimination than we do on the business side .
Even just from the perspective of opportunities and programming , I think they have a bigger challenge than we do professionally in that , if you look at things like festival lineups and if you look at the opportunities , or even if you look at tour growth and so forth , it ’ s still very disproportionate . You still hear a lot of things , like that people would rather see male bands than females bands . You know , females are over half of the consumers of music , so where does that thought process comes from that they don ’ t want to see females ? I ’ m not really sure what that is based in , but there seems to be some sort of old school philosophy that that is the case . Again , as the years go on , that is not [ the case ]. You see the Adeles and Taylor Swifts and that is absolutely not the case ; it ’ s just about making sure they have those same opportunities .
I do find that the female artists are really going out of their way to educate themselves ; to understand how to read their royalty statements , to make sure they ’ re getting the money where it should be , and stand up for each other and stand up for themselves . But I do think they face more overt misogyny than women do on the business side , absolutely .
Michael Raine is the Senior Editor of Canadian Musician .
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