Commentary
In August this year, a new study emerged, entitled “Risky business: policy legacy and gender inequality in Australian opera production,” and published by the International Journal of Cultural Policy.
The paper’s authors, Caitlin Vincent (Melbourne University), Katya Johanson (Edith Cowan University), and Bronwyn Coate (RMIT University), argue that between the years 2005 and 2020, state-funded Australian opera companies have discriminated against women.
“We find that women experience gender-based disadvantage across the key creative roles of opera,” they wrote.
In other words, there are not enough professional female conductors, directors, or set and lighting designers, and the industry must employ more.
But my contention is that a lighting director, whether man or woman, must always be hired for their merit, not their biological sex.
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Incidentally, both the last director and lighting designer I worked with—in fact, who worked for me—were women, and they were very good. It did not matter to me that they were women; their skills spoke for themselves.
In previous articles for The Epoch Times, I have argued that an artwork’s craft is of greater importance than an artist’s identity. This axiom cannot be inverted.
Whilst art of both high and low quality exists courtesy of any artist, an artist, in the truest sense of the word, exists only if the quality of his art is high.
The increasingly-proffered suggestion that the artist is a worker should be categorically rejected; though the artist creates work, he is not merely a worker who produces—only a neo-Marxist ideologue (or our minister for the Arts, apparently) would reduce him to such.
He who toils for years composing operas is not comparable to he who labours in a factory, in that he who labours in a factory does so purely for financial purposes, to the foremost advantage of himself and their family.
An artist, however, creates for expressive purposes, for art of the highest quality is the highest form of human expression.
By prioritising expression, and rejecting commerce as his chief concern, the artist upholds his authenticity.
On the Contrary
It is true that there are, for example, fewer Australian female conductors than male equivalents. But it is not clear to me that this fact is the result of contemporary malice.For instance, in Australia, there is not one competitive opportunity that exists exclusively for male composers, but there are several for women, including the Merlyn Myer Music Commission, the Sue W. Chamber Music Composition Prize, and the Australian Women’s Wind Band Composition Award.
Additionally, women compete alongside men in other composition competitions, such as the two Paul Lowin prizes and the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge, Opera House and Skyline is seen illuminated prior to the Earth Hour 2009 power switch off on March 28, 2009. Brendon Thorne/Getty Images
If there is a sex of composers that, today, objectively enjoys fewer competitive opportunities, it is men, not women.
So, in their paper, Ms. Vincent, Ms. Johanson, and Ms. Coate write that “women experience gender-based disadvantage” in the arts, and accepting this at face value, is it not true to also write that men experience a different kind of gender-based disadvantage?
Indeed, when was the last time a team of social scientists objectively considered the unique circumstances of today’s male artists?
I do not believe that Australian women of talent today are barred from achieving in the arts. Simone Young, Australia’s greatest living conductor, is a woman whose career dwarfs those of her male colleagues.
Indeed, in my final undergraduate year, I was the only male composition student among my peers.
One has to believe, as should the paper’s authors, that if both women and men want to participate in the arts then they are able to do so, with greater ease than ever before—unless one preoccupies oneself lamenting the underrepresentation of men in the nursing profession, or, as Jordan Peterson might put it, that there are very few female bricklayers.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
