That’s great to know about Sound Librarian. Thanks for sharing!

It’s worth noting Sound Librarian have tried to address this in their own way. They had some kind of training program targeted at women in sound – plus they offer a 20% discount as a way of highlighting the pay gap. This isn’t a one size fits all solution of course, but hopefully as we see a positive culture shift the workforce will change with it,

Mike, thank you for reading as well as commenting! In order to have a fruitful conversation, it’s important that both sides are expressed, and I’m glad that you took the time to join in.

I certainly agree that men and women as a whole have different professions which may appeal to them, or in which they naturally, as a whole, excel. I’m happy to take this moment to clarify–I am not insinuating that a solution lies in hiring women who are unwilling or unqualified to hold positions in audio engineering. I’m simply asking that those who express an interest, go through the process of getting degrees and acquiring the necessary experience and knowledge be considered for the jobs available without dismissal purely based on their gender.

Like I mentioned, I too had previously assumed that there simply wasn’t the demographic of women audio engineers, but as a business owner I’ve come to realize that many women are getting educations in this particular area of study and are applying for jobs. They’re just not represented in the same percentage in the actual profession. This would lead me to believe that perhaps it is not a lack of skills, mental capacity, or interest in the field, but maybe other exterior factors which are skewing this statistic.

I hope that we can agree that despite society’s overall view of a gender’s capacity to hold a certain position (after all, when my father was ill in the hospital, I witnessed several male nurses, surely in the minority, who offered unique and wonderful talents for nursing in their capacity to relate to male patients, easily turn or lift them in beds, etc.), each individual always deserves to be judged based on his or her personal merit.

I hope you don’t really believe that. Who’s to say if the ‘industry’ should really do anything at all? There will always be careers and areas where women excel better than men (and vice versa) and that’s not a societal flaw, it’s a fact of nature. Men’s and women’s brains are wired differently (not my opinion btw, this is science). That’s why there will always be more men in fields like mathmatics, computers, race-car drivers, and more women in fields like nursing, social work, and such. Bias obviously exists in your (or any) industry, but the blame should be placed with the individual who’s discriminating, not the entire industry.

Verna, I can completely relate. I certainly have had much worse experiences which I chose not to share for this piece because I wanted to focus on the underlying issues and their possible solution rather than distracting with the novelty of ghastly stories. But, that was a hard choice to make, since those stories underline the deep truth of our situation. Over the years, I have found myself in very difficult workplace situations, but have felt pressure to not draw further attention to the myself by complaining. It’s a slow slog to build up trust and credibility day by day with those who don’t necessarily give it freely, but in the end I hope it’s as worth it for you as it is for me. Feel free to send me an email if you ever need to vent. :)

Verna – you brought up a good element that hasn’t really come up yet: how it’s really difficult to stand up to workplace harassment or bullying. Jesting comes along with the gig, but there is a line that sometimes gets crossed. I’m sure many of us women have stories of getting hit on but would never report it to management (thinking it’ll affect our job, or that we can handle it on our own). I was once asked in an interview if I was married or planning to have kids soon, which is totally illegal to ask (in the US) because of discrimination laws. I let those kinds of things slide when I was younger cause I needed the work or was scared of retaliation… if it were to happen to me now, I wouldn’t think twice about saying something about it.

Thanks for reading, David, and for sharing your experiences. I have a friend who read the post as well and mentioned a similar experience. He said that he had never thought about the issue until he played guitar with a gospel band at an all-African American church. As a young college-aged white man, that experience was formative in helping him to understand the feelings of others who are minorities in certain situations.

I’m a big fan of WAM (Women’s Audio Mission) and am glad that they’re gaining such a following amongst people of all different backgrounds. Thanks to you and your company for being so open-minded!

I attended a master training class given by Alan Parsons in Chicago last weekend and there were 3 women attendees out of 35. We need to change that ratio. I’ve met the folks at Women’s Audio Mission and I’m happy to say they are making progress. My company Musicians Guild is certainly doing what it can to level the playing field.

Thanks for sharing and keep on fighting the good fight.

Thanks for reading, April! It certainly is a fine line, and simply keeping an open mind is truly the key. Incidentally, my partner Jeff and I were recently interviewing for two editing positions at Boom Box Post. We made a point of meeting with every single person who contacted us without cherry picking with whom we invested our time. It turned out that after meeting everyone and comparing small test samples of their work, we ended up two new female staff members. They hadn’t necessarily been the most experienced candidates, but they were the most talented. That really surprised us both, but we are thrilled with the level of fresh talent we’ve added to our team.