For the first time, a vast study, published Tuesday by the Musicaction Foundation, paints a portrait of the role of women in the Canadian francophone music industry and the perception that they have of their workplace. The majority of them believe their work is devalued compared to that of men, and more than half say they have suffered psychological or sexual harassment.
The document, drawn up from 600 testimonies collected in all trades, from the interpreter to the stage technician, gives a quantified measure of what various speeches in recent years have already indicated on the depreciation of women’s work. in industry.
Led by Joëlle Bissonnette, professor in the Department of Management at UQAM’s School of Management Sciences and specialist in the music industry, the study Women in the Francophone Canadian Music Industry also sounds the alarm about harassment in the workplace: 69% of respondents believe they have experienced psychological harassment in their workplace. Among them, 56% say they have been victims of sexual harassment, and 12% of acts that they qualify as criminal harassment.
“The other aspect that also sent shivers down my spine was the lack of knowledge [qu’ont les victimes] resources at their disposal,” says Joëlle Bissonnette, pointing out that 66% of respondents do not know where to turn for help in the event of harassment.
The question of the place of women in the musical programming of radio stations and festivals is also addressed within the framework of this study. The results reveal that women feel disadvantaged and feel that their work is judged more harshly than that of their male peers. More than half (53%) of respondents “feel[ent] often or always the duty to prove themselves more because of their gender”, a proportion which climbs for performers and author-composers (63%) as well as instrumentalists and choristers (71%). The study suggests possible solutions aimed at better integrating women into their community. “As a priority, we must continue to raise awareness in the music industry of all forms of exclusion and harassment,” concludes the researcher, who draws our attention to the role of women entrepreneurs.
“This is a strong theme of the study, explains Joëlle Bissonnette. Forty-six percent of respondents have started businesses in the sector; nearly half of these are artists. We are also talking about small businesses, which means that they are often the only ones to occupy several trades in their business. This allows flexibility and proximity with the artists, but also requires an ability to adapt to new situations. »
“It must be recognized that women have, in certain matters — in the exercise of leadership, the management of organizations or their role in creative artistic activities — ways of doing things that set them apart, in whole or in part because of the genre, continues the researcher. What emerges from the study is that these ways of doing things set them apart and would benefit from being better recognized. Women exercise leadership in other ways, but their actions are not necessarily well supported in the current state of the industry. We should better recognize their benefit to the sector. »
First French-speaking portrait
The particularity of this study is due to the extent of the questions raised, according to Joëlle Bissonnette. “We first identified all the studies, in Canada and around the world, to determine the themes and problems addressed that affect the place of women in the music industry, in order to develop the questionnaire. which was submitted to women workers in the industry in the fall of 2020. The study paints an empirical portrait of the situation of women, the approach chosen having been to take stock of the situation rather than a comparative study (between genres, languages or workplaces).
“As a researcher, I find it interesting to leave the comparative approach, explains Joëlle Bissonnette. We have defined the purpose of the study to understand in depth the situation of women by leaving the comparative approach, what we can then do in the light of the results of this study, which we are making public so that other researchers continue the search. Several similar studies had been carried out in Europe and English Canada, mainly in Ontario, but this is the very first pan-Canadian portrait of the Francophone music industry, to which a majority (89%) of Quebec residents responded.
At the start of the project, made possible thanks to funding from the Canada Music Fund, the researcher and the Musicaction Foundation expected to receive nearly 300 testimonials. “In the end, we received almost twice as many, and I think that says a lot,” says Anne-Karine Tremblay, head of corporate and legal affairs and collective initiatives at Musicaction. “I think it was time to give a voice to women, who wanted to express themselves on the subject. They had a real need to tell their reality to raise ways to better help them in the development of their careers. »
“We want this approach to be constructive,” adds Louise Chenail, Musicaction’s general manager. We want it to inspire us to take action. »