They are music. They are women. And they fight for equal opportunities in the field. So that your rights are respected, both on and off the stage.
“The work of women in music has been overshadowed by patriarchy, which has caused society to always think of the masculine,” says Costa Rican singer and songwriter Amanda Quesada in dialogue with DW.
“In music there is a certain sexual division of labor. There is still suspicion if a woman is a percussionist, bassist, sound player or electric guitarist”, he exemplifies. “Perhaps they are not treated badly, but they are underestimated”, indicates Quesada from the Costa Rican capital.
“In the case of female pop singers, much emphasis is placed on the aesthetic part, on the image, rather than on their vocal quality,” she indicates and knows from her own experience.
Amanda Quesada: Costa Rican pop ballad singer.
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The trajectory is made, it is not born with it
The Colombian Alejandra Gómez, meanwhile, adds another aspect, referring to the visibility and representativeness of the genre in the medium.
“Many women who are not appearing at this time is because they do not have a” track record. ” But then: they don’t hire them because they don’t have experience, and they don’t have experience because they don’t hire them ”, analyzes the co-founder of the Almighty collective (“ an ecosystem of women in music ”), consulted by DW.
Where are those women with weight going to come from, if they are not given the opportunity, because they are always looking for them? Criticizes the manager of alternative bands.
“Many times the answer we find to the problem of the lack of inclusion of professional women in festival programming is: ‘There are no women'”, says Gómez.
“But it is not that there are not, but that they do not know them”, he refutes.
Alejandra Gómez: co-founder of the Almighty collective.
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Women in action – Paradigm in question
The list of difficulties and injustices to which women are exposed in the musical environment also includes discrimination, sexual harassment, lack of opportunities for professional advancement, the wage gap, and of course, prejudice.
But the female musicians of the continent are coming together to respond in a coordinated way, to join forces and make themselves heard.
In Argentina,Women’s Music Civil Association of Santiago del Estero, has carried out three editions of the “National Meeting of Music of Women, Lesbians, Transvestites, Trans, Intersex and Non-Binaries”.
“We generate, project and wish this meeting convinced that we are political subjects who militate for the construction of more egalitarian, democratic and federal public policies,” says Carolina Haick, one of the main promoters, to DW.
Carolina Haick: singer of popular music and member of the band “Las Mullieris” from Santiago del Estero, Argentina.
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And it contextualizes: “Although in 2019 a Female Quota Law has been sanctioned, which is being applied by the National Institute of Music with a non-binary perspective, we still feel a lot of resistance to its implementation,” says the member of the band “The Mullieris”.
Indeed, driven by Argentine music, in the South American country the first law was approved worldwide that establishes a female quota for musical events, which requires 30 percent participation by women and dissidents in festivals.
In 2020, hand in hand with the pandemic, they have gone for even more, and using virtuality, they have given rise to theRed TRUENA (Plurinational Transfeminist Network of Music Workers) “whose main mission is to strengthen a network of workers in the music sector with a gender perspective.”
A similar initiative is carried out by the Colombian collective Almighty: an updated and constantly growing directory of dissident women and gender in the sector. “We are the beginning of the music of the future,” they promise.
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