The University of Sydney Business School sydney.edu.au/business Skipping a beat Associate Professor Rae Cooper, Dr Amanda Coles and Assessing the state of Ms Sally Hanna-Osborne gender equality in the 2017 Australian music industry Skipping a beat: Assessing the state of gender equality in the Australian music industry Associate Professor Rae Cooper, Dr Amanda Coles and Ms Sally Hanna-Osborne Contents Executive Summary 2 1. Introduction and Scope 3 2. Dimensions of gender-based inequality in the Australian music industry 5 2.1 Who ‘makes it’ in the music industry? 5 2.2 Who makes the decisions in the music industry? 8 3. Why the discord and what can we do about it? 11 3.1 Recommendations 11 References 13 Appendix A 16 Appendix B 18 Appendix C 21 Author Biographies 23 We acknowledge funding from the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) and we thank Lisa Jeffrey for her research assistance on aspects of this project. We also acknowledge that this research was initiated by the persistence of Vicki Gordon, a long-time gender- equality activist in the Australian Music Industry. Contact Associate Professor Rae Cooper
[email protected] +61 2 9351 5241 1 Executive Summary Findings This report demonstrates that male advantage is a pervasive feature of the Australian music industry. Using publicly available published data the report interrogates the industry dynamics that have produced a contemporary music scene in which radio playlists, festival line-ups, industry awards, peak bodies and major industry boards are dominated by male