Music is performance. Gender is performance. The arts have a social responsibility when it comes to the representation and negotiation of gender as one of the foremost structuring forces in society. The last two decades have seen a growing interest in music and gender research in Scandinavia. Music education, in particular, is a melting pot of gendered performances. Moreover, today’s musical cultures are (still) highly gender segregated, both horizontally in terms of instrument preferences, genre, and artistic expressions, and vertically in terms of the reputation of different professional fields and positions. Recent initiatives in gender equality show that the field of research on music and gender in the Northern countries is ripe for change. The question is how to conduct these changes. How can we empower present and future generations to be both sensible and critical with regard to gendered performances? How can we as researchers and educators encounter gender bias in both research design and daily life in academia? And how can we collaborate with other academic disciplines in order to solve research questions related to power, justice, and freedom?
Researchers from all academic disciplines researching music and musical culture are invited to discuss music and gender issues theoretically, methodologically, pedagogically, and artistically. The conference languages will be English and Scandinavian languages.
The conference is arranged by the «Gender Balance in Art Education» project (BALANSE) at the music conservatory at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway in collaboration with the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research at UiT, the Swedish-based Gender and Music Research Network (GeMus), and UiT research groups Multimodality, Art, and Gender in Interdisciplinary Communication (MAGIC) and InnOvation.
