Gender equality discourse in classical music higher education: Women, individualisation, and change

This article takes its’ starting point in the ongoing debate about gender and gender equality in higher music education (HME) institutions where new policies, projects and initiatives have been developed during the first decades of the 21st century. This article’s analysis is framed by feminist scholarship on gender equality, and gender mainstreaming, as well as music education research about gender and gender equality. The aim is to investigate how gender and gender equality is talked about in classical music higher education, analyse how it is experienced and in what terms it is described. The main research question is, how is gender and gender equality constructed among leaders, teachers and students in three HME institutions in Nordic (Finland), Baltic (Estonia) and Central European (Hungary) countries. It is based on qualitative thematic semi-structured interviews with 45 participants, analysed with qualitative data-driven content analysis. In the discussion we argue that gender and gender equality are, in our material, constructed as being about women, that gender is rarely related to other types of discrimination or inequalities and that the cause of gender inequality is individualised. The conclusions suggest steps for further pursuing gender equality in HME.