Australian Women Screen Composers: Career Barriers and Pathways

While the music industry in Australia is healthy and vibrant, women continue to be underrepresented in key roles in this sector and make up only a small proportion of those making money from their musical endeavours. This imbalance represents not only an inability of women to access the social, psychological and economic benefits of music making, but a loss of potential talent to the industry and audiences. As an organisation committed to redressing this situation, APRA AMCOS has commissioned this research on screen composers - a group that is more highly imbalanced in terms of gender than other parts of their membership - as a preliminary exploration of what factors are limiting or enabling the development of women's careers in music. This type of industry-focused research on music and gender has not been undertaken in Australia previously, and the findings will be useful in determining strategies for moving towards greater gender equity in music. This research was funded in a large part by APRA AMCOS, with additional funds contributed by RMIT University.