I Have Confidence in Sunshine, I Have Confidence in Rain

A year ago I asked the question "Where Are the Female Composers?" and attempted to answer it by briefly touching on the issue of an institutionalized gender gap, among other topics. Sarah addressed the frustrating discrepancies between the male/female demographics in the composition world and the winners of awards in "Competitions and Gender: What's Up with That?" I still feel mostly the same way as I did last year regarding these topics. However, one highly important aspect of the gender gap was left out of our discussion last year: the issue of confidence.



For the most part, I find (in my limited experience) that women are generally unwilling to discuss confidence issues when addressing the gender gap, especially in mixed-gender company. I think we all feel, to a certain extent, that admitting to a lack of confidence or having any kind of self-doubt displays a weakness that can only be harmful to us in this brash, networking, market-driven world.

(Side note: Timidity, hesitancy, or even expressing an appreciation for the complexity of an issue are all qualities that are currently culturally devalued. We can see this even on the national stage in the media, when Obama is criticized for his sometimes bumbling, "professorial" nature and Palin is given kudos for her brazenly over-inflated sense of self. We've all heard this kind of statement, or something similar: "Well, I don't respect her views, but you have to give her credit: she's got balls." I won't even begin to address the frustrating sexual bias of such a statement. The bottom line, though, is that in our culture, Palin's confidence sells and therefore is "valued," whereas Obama's "self-doubt" is considered boring at best and embarrassing at worst.)

We all know from dealing with the posturing and one-upmanship that happens in the composition world that it is just bad business to show fear, to express doubts, or to express other general insecurities (although, when you do, especially to other women, it is interesting how often the response is something along the lines of, "Oh, I'm so glad you said that. I feel the same way!"). So it is perhaps unsurprising that issues of confidence--especially as a factor in the gender gap--sometimes go under the radar. 

In fact, Sarah and I debated last year whether or not to address confidence at all and we decided not to. We wanted to raise questions and to focus on the seemingly more damaging aspects of the gender gap, such as condescension, harassment, and exclusion.

Additionally, we both had heard others say, "Confidence is a personality thing, not a gender thing," and we didn't want to alienate our male readers who have struggled with confidence issues themselves. The world (and the composition world, especially) is not a forgiving place to anyone who is insecure, no matter what gender they may be.

A year later, I think we were remiss in not addressing confidence in relation to the gender gap. I do agree that confidence issues can be, to a certain extent, personality-based and therefore somewhat gender- or sex-neutral. However, I think that as composers, women may be more likely than men to have confidence issues. For women, the crisis of confidence is not necessarily an individualized phenomenon as much as it is a cultural and existential phenomenon (and for some shy personalities, it may be both). For one thing, we have fewer role models and a much smaller support network. 

It is much more difficult, psychologically, for a woman to envision her place in the composition world than it is for a man (and we all know it's hard enough for anyone to envision themselves as a successful composer). Should she have an off day or a moment of feeling low (we're all prone to these), she is much less likely to find strength in her gendered community than her male peers would be, simply because she does not really have a gendered community at all. Never underestimate the power of role models.

In a musicology class I recently read an article by Erin Wehr-Flowers on female confidence issues in jazz improvisation (Erin Wehr-Flowers. 2006. "Differences between Male and Female Students' Confidence, Anxiety, and Attitude toward learning jazz improvisation." Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 54, No. 4, (Winter, 2006), pp. 337-349). It is a small study that is perhaps lacking in substantial amounts of data (these were the criticisms of my classmates, at least), but I still think it is illuminating to a certain degree. Of the 137 responses (taken from individuals in middle school, junior high school, high school, college, and community jazz ensembles), it is striking that "the mean score for females was lower than the mean score for males on every statement of the three subscales" regarding confidence in jazz improvisation (345). 

Basically, when asked to gauge their own abilities in jazz improvisation, the female responses were consistently lower than the male responses on every question, despite there being no significant indication of a talent disparity. Of course this study could be an aberration, but I would bet money that if a similar survey were given to male and female composers that there would be similar results.

The problem with a lack of confidence in a gendered group is that it only perpetuates the cycle that creates the gender gap in the first place. If women are not feeling empowered in the composition world they probably will opt out in some fasion. Sarah noted in her post The Sexist Elephant that women tend to drop away from composition in academia as the degrees get higher. Are women self-selecting out? And if they are, is it because of confidence? We know from statistics that about 20% of composers in America are female. It would be interesting to know if competitions receive submissions that reflect this demographic proportion or if women are also self-selecting out of competitions because of confidence issues.

I imagine the gender gap in the composition world is due to a combination of women self-selecting out (for a wide variety of reasons) and institutionalized discrimination. We do, after all, live in a country that still has a wage gap with a portion that is still unexplained by anything other than discrimination. And we know from the stories that we shared last year (and that our commenters shared) that discrimination still happens. There will always be bigots in the world, so I'm not sure what to do about the discrimination aspect of things. But I do think we need to address this issue of confidence (and role models) head on, as was suggested in this recent article in The Guardian. 

I'm very curious about your thoughts on this topic, as I know it is complex. Please don't hesitate to leave a comment on any aspect of what I've just discussed.

Posted by Natalie