What does gender have to do with music, anyway?

mapping the relation between music and gender

Abstract

‘What does gender have to do with music?’, is in this article a question explored in order to 1) give an overview of important themes and areas in feminist interdisciplinary research on music and gender from the past decades, and to 2) theoretically advance what is specific about music’s relation to gender, and discuss how music and gender research can be furthered today. To achieve these two aims, the author describes and discusses different approaches to investigating the relation between music and gender; cultural critique of music itself, consumption/production research, studies of genre and social settings as well as studies of media technology. The author, with her portrayal of the field as a back-drop, wants to revitalize a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of music and gender research. Arguing that this is an interdisciplinary field with its own theoretical contribution that can be furthered by advancing the discussions of music’s particularity and music research’s relation to intersectional gender theory.