A new study from the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice at the Berklee College of Music in Boston has identified a large gender gap among faculty teaching jazz in higher education.
Led by Berklee’s Lara Pellegrinelli, in partnership with students from The New School in New York City, the study draws from data on over 3,000 music educators at more than 200 educational institutions. According to Dr. Pellegrinelli’s analysis, just 15 percent of all jazz faculty and only 8 percent of instrumental jazz faculty in the United States are women. Over a third of the institutions included in the study employ no women jazz faculty members. At the examined colleges and universities with over 30 jazz faculty members, women’s representation ranges from 6 percent to 32 percent.
The vast majority of women jazz higher education instructors in the United States are adjuncts. Among women jazz educators in tenure-track positions, 18 percent are assistant professors, 17 percent are associate professors, and 10 percent are full professors.
Among women who are instrumental jazz educators, 49 percent teach voice. Followed by the voice discipline, women instrumental jazz faculty are most represented in piano and keyboard (17 percent) and saxophone (7 percent), while they remain significantly underrepresented (less than 5 percent) in percussion, violin, flute, guitar, and bass education.
Overall, women jazz faculty members are slightly more likely to teach performance than academic subjects. Women faculty are less than 13 percent of those teaching music history and appreciation, music theory, and composition.
Compared to their male peers, women jazz educators are less likely to hold administrative roles, representing just 16 percent of all jazz administrators. Only 6 percent of jazz program directors and department chairs are women.
Dr. Pellegrinelli has been a researcher with the Berklee College of Music for the past three years. She holds a Ph.D. in music from Harvard University.