The lives of music industry professionals are replete with paradoxes: workstyles must be free enough for people to innovate, yet strict enough to meet sometimes-gruelling industry scheduling. Individual creative goals rub up against market demands. One paradox stands out for Europe’s musical mainstream in the contemporary moment. In a sector in which personal expression is prized, in reality, female and gender diverse music professionals often do not experience a sense of personal freedom in their work, as they continue to face gender stereotypes, unequal access to resources, and, at times, harassment. On one hand, passion and a desire for creative expression draw them to a famously challenging sector. As Belgian behind-the-scenes workers summarise, ‘Wanting to work in music, in support roles, was a way for me to be part of a field that had always drawn me in. I had stars in my eyes working in that industry, it was all about passion’.Footnote 1 On the other hand, female and gender expansive professionals’ experiences are constrained by inequities on the job. ‘Being a woman in the music industry, I could talk about that for hours’, a communications professional reports. ‘It’s not easy’.Footnote 2
The music industry is an ideal sector in which to examine gendered labour, notably because inequities are so stark. At the same time, the experiences of professionals in Belgium offer an intriguing vantage point into both how these workplace dynamics are experienced, and a space in which to examine how the country’s music sector is trying new innovations in response. Sociologist Marie Buscatto and anthropologist Anne Monjaret find that for creative workers, including producers and technicians as well as musicians, their activity is ‘often seen as a deeply personal form of expression, apparently distant from social constraints and filled with individual, unique desires and aspirations’. While unexamined, ‘they may at first glance appear removed from social contingencies, … the meaning and form these practices take offer a concrete way to observe how gender is both reinforced and challenged in society’ (Reference Buscatto and Monjaret2016, p. 13, author’s translation). To probe this tension between idealised attitudes towards creative labour and the reality on the ground, this article performs the examination Buscatto and Monjaret call for. This analysis reports on research that addresses two interrelated questions in a Belgian context: (1) What gendered expectations, if any, do female and/or gender diverse workers face in behind-the-scenes music industry roles? and (2) what strategies, if any, have female and/or gender diverse workers used to support their access to or advancement in such roles?
This article examines gendered labour in the music industry, focussing on behind-the-scenes workers in Belgium in the 2020s. While broader studies have documented global gender imbalances in the music industry (Smith et al. Reference Smith2021; Malachi et al. Reference Malachi2023), they often leave unexplored why disparities persist. This study shifts focus to the everyday working lives of professionals who labour offstage, such as managers, live sound technicians, producers, songwriters, communications professionals, and festival organisers, whose voices are often less audible, yet whose labour is essential to the functioning of the sector.Footnote 3 The Belgian case offers a particularly instructive site of inquiry, both for Brussels’ innovative and highly international music scene and its reflection of broader European industry trends.
The research method uses a literature review of gendered labour in the music industry focussed on specific attitudes named by Belgian interlocutors, as well as the possibilities for mentorship programmes to support workers affected by these dynamics. New ethnographic interviews with Belgian music industry professionals nuance existing data on industry work. This method follows previous studies on music and gender with behind-the-scenes music workers, in which interviews and participant observation facilitate participant-led insights (Wolfe Reference Wolfe2019; Reddington Reference Reddington2021). The analysis is based on twenty formal interviews conducted in Brussels and via Zoom between June 2024 and April 2025 with female, male, and nonbinary music industry workers. Participants, identified through snowball sampling, have professional experience in one or more behind-the-scenes roles in the Belgian popular music industry in Brussels and/or Liège, and an interest in discussing gender and labour. Additional insights come from informal conversations with professionals in the sector, as well as the author’s participation in live music sector inclusion-related initiatives. This study moves beyond quantitative measures to explore how gendered working conditions are experienced, understood, and sometimes reshaped.
Based on responses from Belgian industry professionals, synthesised with relevant research, this article details four categories of expectations that women* face as intersectionally gendered in music workplaces: alienation; having their authority and legitimacy challenged; inappropriate sexualising of workplace situations; and harassment and violence.Footnote 4 It also lays out one overarching strategy that almost all respondents sought: participating in music industry mentorship, either as a mentor or mentee. This strategy connects directly to three barriers that motivated people to access mentorship and education: desire for role models; lack of fair pay; and a need for training that is receptive to the needs of women* and their intersectional identities. That professionals seek out these initiatives to address particular challenges highlights the persistence of barriers in the workforce.
This research presents participants’ expansive terminology for female music industry workers. While English lacks a term that fully includes women, nonbinary, and other gender-expansive people, interviewees used phrases such as ‘women and gender minorities’, FINTA, or FLINTA,Footnote 5 explicitly including trans* individuals. French speakers often used ‘personnes sexisées et racisées’ to indicate those affected by sexism and racism. The text preserves interviewees’ terms or their translations, and uses female* and women* in analysis. In the words of Mac Kam, a festival director, the asterisk shows inclusion of ‘nonbinary people and everyone who identifies as a woman’.Footnote 6
(In)Equity and gendered musical labour: Situating the Belgian sector
Musical labour in Belgium follows many global trends. Yet, some unique aspects make it a particularly generative location for inquiry. This section first details global quantitative data from industry and academic surveys from the 2020s, and then contextualises Belgium specifically. Recent studies have exposed a stark underrepresentation of women* both on and offstage in popular music industries, as well as hostile work environments across genres and geographies (Barra et al. Reference Barra, Fitts Ward, Anderson and Brown2022; Malachai et al. Reference Malachi2023; Smith et al. Reference Smith2021). Women and nonbinary individuals are more likely than men to experience career setbacks, as illustrated by a global 2024 study with more than 4,000 music professionals. In addition to pay gaps and patterns of having their work judged to a higher standard, this study found that, compared to men, women were almost 5 times more likely to be interrupted or dismissed during meetings, and nonbinary individuals were three times more likely than men to be similarly dismissed (Kahlert, Cirisano, and Oleksiyenko Reference Kahlert, Cirisano and Oleksiyenko2024, p. 11).
A research team that tracked professional musicians’ experiences across 109 countries finds that one in three women in the music industry have been passed up for a promotion, most ‘have experienced not receiving credit or recognition for their work (58% and 60%, respectively)’, and more than 40% of women have had ‘their own career experience discredited and that it was assumed they were in a more junior position than they were’ (Debnam et al. Reference Debnam2023, p. 19). These systemic inequalities are felt in particularly acute and intersectional ways by racialised women, disabled individuals, and members of LGBTQIA+ communities.Footnote 7 This same report reveals that women and gender-expansive individuals are twice as likely as men to discover that they are being paid less than colleagues performing the same work. Half of women from marginalised racial or ethnic backgrounds earned less than their peers, a disparity also experienced by 44% of women with disabilities and 41% of LGBTQIA+ women. Gender-based violence is significant: three in five women report sexual harassment, and one in five report sexual assault (Kahlert, Cirisano, and Oleksiyenko Reference Kahlert, Cirisano and Oleksiyenko2024).
Large datasets from industry- and university-based surveys can serve as helpful tools for observing large-scale trends, when approached with appropriate scrutiny. Those that only rely on binary gender reporting risk omitting or misrepresenting gender expansive people (Bridges et al. Reference Bridges, Strong, Overton and Berish2021, p. 5). Quantitative data from the teams led by Debnam and Kahlert cited above offer a large scale, as well as space for female, male, and nonbinary data reporting. Their international nature is a strength, and they sample less-commonly covered global geographies. Yet, surveys like these leave open space for studies like the one outlined in this article, which provide region-specific focus to inform culturally relevant analyses. Unlike qualitative tools, representation-based approaches fall short in that they cannot provide reasons for the inequities that they quantify. In contrast, an academic analysis of twenty years of data on women in the music industry found that examining ‘educational and cultural roots’ is necessary to evaluate ‘why so many women face this rather difficult entry into the field’ (Bridges et al. Reference Bridges, Strong, Overton and Berish2021, p. 2). Due to these interconnected factors, this study analyses lived experiences of music professionals, deepening discussions initiated by quantitative research and industry data.
Research focussing on Western Europe in the 2020s provides an applicable ground for this study. Previous studies on gendered labour across European entertainment industry economies have found disparities in compensation and treatment of workers along gendered lines (Lorey Reference Lorey2015; Anthias Reference Anthias2012). The 2020s are a decade with particular labour concerns, due to the effects of the coronavirus and the rise of the gig economy. Workers navigating the precarities of freelancing lack the legal protections of employees. Compounding this, Julius-Cezar MacQuarie’s study finds that European nightlife sector female and migrant gig workers ‘are more invisible and less paid than their male counterparts’ (Reference MacQuarie, Brandellero, Rodrigues and Pardue2025, p. 98). Though many Western European governments provided supports for workers during the pandemic, creative labourers continued to experience challenges due to access, fund availability, and entitlement concerns. The supports for Belgian creative workers sometimes excluded those who faced significant hardships, such as a worker whose income drop of 55% did not meet the 60% loss minimum requirement for government aid (Pulignano et al. Reference Pulignano, Domecka, Muszyński, Vermeerbergen and Riemann2021, p. 10). Sector precarity is inequitably distributed in relation to gender and intersectional factors. Drawing on quantitative reports and interviews with creative workers across Belgium and other European countries, Valeria Pulignano et al. find that increased precarity is linked to the cost of childcare limiting professional opportunities for working mothers (Reference Pulignano, Domecka, Muszyński, Vermeerbergen and Riemann2021).
While gender parity remains a major challenge, Belgium stands out for its relatively higher representation of women among the most-streamed musicians at 34%, surpassing neighbours France (12%), Luxembourg (20%), and the European average (25%) (Debnam et al. Reference Debnam2023). Yet, as Adrien de Frapoint notes, Belgium’s ‘artistic and cultural sector is clearly not spared from gender discrimination and sexism’ (Reference de Fraipont2016, p. 2, author’s translation). Beyond visibility, women remain underrepresented among full-time professional musicians (Bataille and de Brabandère Reference Bataille and de Brabandère2019). More men than women are doing paid work in the sector in Belgium, despite greater numbers of women attending school for it, per the Statbel survey on the labour force (Bujiriri Reference Bujiriri2018, p. 18). Fewer women occupy roles in upper administration, particularly in roles with creative and editorial control (Van Hove and Velghe Reference Van Hove and Velghe2024).Footnote 8 In French-speaking Belgium, these inequities are more than numerical, notably in ‘role hierarchies, pay gaps, and access to decision-making positions’ (Levaux and de Brabandère Reference Levaux and de BrabandèreForthcoming).
When considering both large-scale programming and that rooted in local communities, signs of progress are emerging in Brussels and beyond. Belgium hosts mainstream festivals in rock (Rock Werchter, Les Ardentes, Dour), electronic music (Tomorrowland), metal (Graspop), hip hop, and other genres (Esperanzah!); international festivals dedicated to emerging popular musicians (Fifty Lab) as well as small to midsize festivals with regular followings are held in Brussels (Les Équinoxes, Forest Sounds, Les Volumineuses). This includes several festivals that actively support women* in Brussels, including Lady Fest BXL and the Bru.x.Elles festival (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Les Volumineuses Instagram Post 2 Oct 2024.
This article argues that intentionally smaller festivals focussed on FLINTA music professionals operate as mentorship programmes, in addition to entertaining the public; their inclusion here is not because they are mainstream venues but because these events build resumes and audiences for professionals who may later opt to work in more mainstream scenes. Notably, efforts towards gender equity by governmental projects, nonprofits, and music industry professionals have contributed to an increase in the participation of women in mainstream music festivals in the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (FWB), from 21% in 2022 to 34% in 2023 (Scivias Reference Scivias2023), and further to 35.6% in 2024 (Scivias Reference Scivias2024).Footnote 9
Belgium’s novel initiatives in music equity give it the potential to offer insights applicable internationally. Brussels is highly cosmopolitan. In addition to being the seat of the EU, the city is famously the second-most diverse globally, after Dubai. The Brussels-Capital Region is home to residents representing 184 nationalities.Footnote 10 It also has a bustling music and culture sector that is nimble enough to try innovative strategies. In January 2023, the Brussels Capital Region government launched a novel programme to reach gender parity in Brussels’ music and cultural programming (Bujiriri Reference Bujiriri2023).Footnote 11 Live music equity projects have been tried elsewhere, but this project aims to avoid surface-level compliance only, working instead to change attitudes (Lahasky Reference Lahasky, Anderton and Pisfil2021). The Brussels government’s gender parity programme operates alongside industry-focussed efforts, notably Scivias, an organisation that researches gender inequity in the FWB music sector and provides support to organisations aiming to improve their inclusivity (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Scivias Instagram Post 26 Nov 2025.
Brussels’ modest scale enables experimentation in the cultural sector, while resident music professionals often pursue international audiences to sustain long-term careers. Concert organiser and booker Anne-Sophie has seen a spirit of collaboration through establishing ‘partnerships with other associations and organizers’.Footnote 12 It takes work, but innovation is possible: as festival organiser Manon says, ‘we’re in an environment that really allows projects like ours to get off the ground, mainly because alternative approaches are quite readily accepted here compared to in France, but the lack of finances in the sector is still a very big obstacle’.Footnote 13 Music sector workers have a long history of agitating for themselves, tracing at least to their first union in 1893, and sector professionals whose work meets specific requirements have been able to gain access to benefits such as unemployment under certain conditions (Anciaux et al. Reference Anciaux, Bataille, Blondeel, Bours, de Brabandère, De Mesmaeker and Virone2018, pp. 6-10). Evaluating the efficacy and equity of such protections is complex, particularly regarding the impact of the specific work status for artists established in 2002 (Levaux and Lowies Reference Levaux and Lowies2015), yet their presence demonstrates a history of innovations towards creative labour as well as the ongoing prevalence of music workers advocating for their own needs, both of which continue through equity efforts. This study focusses on the Francophone region, because the gender equity charter originated within Francophone organisations and was shaped by international collaborations. It centres on Brussels, where over half of cultural sector jobs in French-speaking Belgium are concentrated, with a secondary focus on Liège, the cultural capital of Wallonia and second-highest market for artistic jobs in FWB (Levaux and de Brabandère Reference Levaux and de Brabandère2025).
Defining the mainstream in the Belgian music sector
Outlining the myriad uses of the term ‘mainstream’ reveals much about the context of a popular music sector. Analyses of the Belgian music industry describe mainstream music media as those with a strong commercial focus, while noting that professionals may have nonlinear career paths that diverge from mainstream career progression expectations (Bujiriri et al. Reference Bujiriri, Bataille, de Brabandère and Bingen2022.). In mainstream work, gendered labour conditions impact wages and audibility, as will be further detailed in the following sections (Govers and Maquestiau Reference Govers and Maquestiau2014). In these respects, the Belgian case both resonates with and nuances broader scholarship on cultural industries. Through a cultural history narrative, David Hesmondhalgh describes how mainstream popular music has become defined as not overly adventurous aesthetically, and that it sometimes supports the very commercialism of which mainstream pop is a part (Reference Hesmondhalgh2013, pp. 76, 45), while Reynolds (Reference Reynolds2006), Leblanc (Reference Leblanc1999), and others have emphasised the oppositional role of underground or DIY popular music scenes. In the Belgian case, mainstream and underground are not fully discrete categories but overlapping modes of cultural production sustained by shared infrastructures and audiences. Behind-the-scenes professionals often work with musicians ranging from emerging artists to those who already have a large listenership. Publicist Lætitia explains, ‘by aiming for large companies, I learned to work with artists who are extremely popular with audiences … Even if that audience wasn’t me, I was very proud of making this artist popular with their desired public’.
In Belgium, distinctions such as commercial vs. nonprofit or ticket sales vs. subsidies do not neatly align with categories like mainstream, community, or underground music. Mainstream venues are important for building professional reputations, yet major spaces such as Ancienne Belgique or Botanique depend on both ticket revenue and public funding, while festivals often draw on grants and sponsorships. As producer Céline noted, ‘festivals, concert halls, organizations, and cultural actors benefit from a great deal of subsidies’.Footnote 14 Some mainstream venues that rely on ticket sales also run smaller halls that attract more niche crowds, and larger organisations run multiple types of nightlife venues under the same fiscal umbrella. Guest programming further blurs boundaries: in the context of discussing her work with booking agency Super Karma, Eva Nasali Pernet pointed out that many concert halls ‘give space to collectives so they can organize their own evenings’ whereby a ‘mainstream’ venue is programmed by a ‘DIY’ collective.Footnote 15 These dynamics demonstrate that mainstream and underground logics are interdependent: as Juliette explained, ‘it’s not one against the other … they are communicating vessels’. This article both holds tensions around the mainstream in popular music while working with a notion of mainstream in the Belgian context as one that refers to music oriented towards broad audiences and circulated with the goal of large-scale audibility.
Given this context, this article focusses on mainstream music sector labour as work pursued for income rather than as a category defined by public recognition. As a Belgian report on labour conditions notes, ‘a large majority struggle to reach this ideal’ (Bujiriri et al. Reference Bujiriri, Bataille, de Brabandère and Bingen2022, pp. 23). The study thus follows Mac Kam’s parsing of mainstream events as those ‘open to the general public’ as well as Anne-Sophie’s conceptualisation, ‘the slightly more mainstream festivals … adhere to programs like Scivias’, when selecting what to include in the present inquiry. This article can be read alongside other studies in this Popular Music special issue to explore the implications of defining the term ‘mainstream’ and the questions its use raises.
Gendered experiences in music industry workplaces
Academic research on gender in the music industry in recent years shows patterns of bias that confront female and gender diverse people, and suggests mentorship as one avenue for addressing such imbalances. This new study finds categories of experiences that are largely congruent with the barriers typified in other contexts. In their study of women in audio engineering, production, composition, editing, and development, Mathew et al. find that women face a ‘a dearth of role models or mentors’, while on the job, while problems they encounter include that they ‘get talked over by male peers’ and face ‘questioning by male co-workers and professors of their skill and ability’; women with children have been shown to have their competence or commitment questioned and they may lose out on opportunities (Reference Mathew, Grossman and Andreopoulou2016, p. 5). In addition, women are expected to perform a particular kind of labour on the job to gain respect: ‘Balancing, mediating, and remaining strongly diplomatic are behaviors women have found to help avoid conflict and be taken seriously’ (Mathew et al. Reference Mathew, Grossman and Andreopoulou2016, p. 6). This echoes previous research, which documents barriers such as women being ‘perceived as “aggressive”’ when they reach leadership roles (Buckingham and Ronan Reference Buckingham, McCarthy and Ronan2019, p. 5). Similar themes reverberate through a study on the use of audio tools, or gear, in technical music roles, in which Eliot Bates and Samantha Bennett find, ‘to be accepted into gear cultures as an equal participant, women must be exceptional at their craft and outperform the average male participant by a considerable margin’ (2025, p. 39). A large-scale qualitative study reports that women often feel isolated in music industry workplaces that are not only staffed mostly by men, but that have male-dominated workplace cultures (Reddington Reference Reddington2021). The issue of sexualising comments, sexual objectification and sexual assault in the workplace permeates multiple studies on gender and labour in music (Brooks et al. Reference Brooks, Pras, Elafros and Lockett2021; Abtan Reference Abtan2016); Catherine Strong analysed international responses to gendered violence and harassment in the popular music sector, finding what she calls a ‘culture of abuse within the music industry’ (Reference Strong, Istvandity, Baker and Cantillon2019, p. 228). This article addresses each of these themes, which Belgian interview participants discussed at length across conversations.
In response to research question 1 regarding gendered experiences at work, this study found four categories of shared experiences and notes some nuance that varied among participants. Participants began from the baseline of recognising that women* were underrepresented across their fields; conversations developed into how gender impacts workplace experiences and what, if anything, is already changing. Belgian respondents were generally optimistic that representation, at least, is improving. As Anne-Sophie noticed, ‘I find that more women and nonbinary individuals are entering the field, and I have observed this trend continuing to grow’. Band backliner and stagehand Alex details that for stage managers, ‘originally, the majority were men’, but he sees more women* entering these roles in the mainstream concert venue where he works. While ‘they are still a minority’, he volunteered, ‘I know quite a few stage managers, tour crew, and transgender technicians’.Footnote 16 But what is work culture like during these changes?
Alienation
The gender imbalance within the music industry can produce a sense of alienation for female* professionals, whose presence remains sparse in many roles. Constance, who left behind a managerial career after confronting these dynamics, had successfully signed her client to a major label, overseen the production of a record, and organised a tour for a male rock band, yet she recalled: ‘It was really hard for me to enter this world as a woman, as a young woman also. It was a very male-dominated industry, like everything, I think it still is. … I also didn’t feel secure. That’s actually why I stopped’.Footnote 17 Her words underline how feelings of isolation and a lack of safety emerge from both underrepresentation and norms that govern industry workplaces.
For many people, participating in mentoring initiatives exposed how much isolation they had been carrying. Lætitia explained that through group workshops with other female* music professionals, ‘I realized I wasn’t all alone’. Similarly, Manon sought community to find professional grounding. When she then went to industry events with fellow mentees, she found ‘allies around me to accompany me … so I didn’t feel alone’. Juliette put it succinctly: ‘for me it felt good to exorcise all these things that we live through alone all year’. Across these accounts, the search for community illustrates both the intensity of the loneliness many people experience, and the transformative potential of collective networks.
When discussing with other women* in the music industry, Lætitia recalled collectively realising, ‘that happened to me too’. In a workshop exercise, ‘I remember a moment when we were all in a circle and we were prompted … anyone who’s never been interrupted in a meeting can sit down. And of course, everyone stayed standing’. This continued with other workplace moments the women* had experienced: ‘when you’re just not listened to in situations where a decision needs to be made. If you’re the one speaking, no one listens. It’s never your decision that ends up being the right one’. At each turn, they found they had shared these experiences in the industry. Lætitia noticed that her fellow female workers ‘deal with those microaggressions all the time, and it actually helps you … change the way you cope’.
Authority and legitimacy being challenged
A pattern of female* workers not being listened to and being interrupted at work emerged across interviews. Céline described her desire to speak ‘without being interrupted’ by men. Juliette, too, names ‘not being listened to’ as a persistent problem. Though she is now in management, she points to gender as a factor in ‘the lack of consideration I experience. it still happens to me even now’. Juliette explains that it is important to address issues like this. While these behaviours continue in the sector, she has seen increased attention to them, ‘whether in the form of assaults or more subtle problematic behaviors, such as ignoring women or assuming they occupy lower-ranking positions when attending professional events’.
Professional legitimacy in the workplace is not equally distributed. Participants identified internalised bias, through which they felt impostor syndrome or a need for validation of their own skills, as well as specific instances in which men were assumed to be competent from the outset, while they were not. Céline reflects on this gendered imbalance: ‘As a woman, you always feel less legitimate in everything you do’. Lyne recalls doubting whether she could call herself a manager while working with a band, admitting, ‘It’s just little old me’. Only when a senior colleague insisted, ‘You are a manager, you work with an artist. So yes, you are legitimate’, did she recognise the value of her work.Footnote 18
This gap is further reinforced in everyday workplace interactions, where women*’s professionalism is undermined by gendered stereotypes. Lætitia recalls being dismissed as ‘too emotional’ after raising difficult issues in a meeting, observing that a colleague later asked to meet privately with her male co-director, excluding her from the decision-making process. As she reflects, ‘It’s just that, as a woman, people say things to me that they would absolutely never say if I were a man in the same situation’. Such dynamics highlight how women* are sometimes characterised as unprofessional, particularly when challenging male colleagues.
Intersectionality
While there are many ways to define and operationalise intersectionality, Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge synthesise that it can be defined as ‘a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences … people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other’ (Reference Hill Collins and Bilge2016, p. 16). Intersectionality is both an approach and an analytic. It is used here both in response to participants’ own use of the term, and as a tool for understanding how multiple axes impact respondents’ workplace experiences.
When analysed carefully, participants’ experiences show nuance based on their positionality and how they understand it within the sector. As composer Luisa explains, ‘we’re talking about a very specific industry … but all of this is rooted in a much bigger history. We grow up with everyday racism, we grow up with everyday sexism’.Footnote 19 Mac Kam reflects, ‘as a director, I am someone affected by various forms of discrimination … as I have built myself through all these experiences of discrimination, I came to feel that it was inevitable to … work from an intersectional approach’. Mac Kam has worked with colleagues to address the needs of women* living with disabilities, as well as on how anti-fat bias impacts women’s* careers intersectionally. Like Anne-Sophie, Mac Kam described seeing ageism affect women* in the sector, while Flo described the intersections between gender minorities, people with disabilities, and people of various class backgrounds, and most interviewees described intersections with queer issues.Footnote 20 Like Judith Butler’s ‘embarrassed etc.’, this list could go on and on (Butler Reference Butler1990).
Manon describes working to understand and respond to artists’ diverse needs in her mentorship programme, even those outside her personal experience. She reflects, ‘I’m a middle-class cis woman who has a Master’s degree … there are plenty of realities I haven’t experienced in terms of gender, social class, race, etc.’ When one musician told her, ‘I had a stalker’, describing the discomfort of seeing him at every show, Manon noted, ‘I’ve never experienced that, but I’m interested in talking with her about what happened and how we can come up with solutions together’. Of another artist, she explained, ‘as a trans man, he doesn’t experience the same difficulties when he is programmed in festivals. Yet because he foregrounds queer topics and his identity in his lyrics, I want us to reflect on what we put in the rider’.
Women* who parent face intersectional challenges. Participants described how mothers in the music industry often face assumptions that their caregiving reduces professional commitment, leading them to be passed over for projects, promotions, and leadership roles.Footnote 21 Reflecting on her early career, Lætitia recalled how her boss, a marketing director, would leave in the mid-afternoon to pick up her child and then continue working at night after bedtime. She and others first thought that her boss ‘was leaving early’, revealing how parenting during ‘traditional’ work hours was interpreted as a lack of dedication, regardless of an employee’s overall productivity. Lætitia later found her boss’ unusual attitude to be a helpful model. When she had two young children, Lætitia left a larger company to create her own agency. By becoming her own boss, she was able to sustain her passion for her work while also deciding how to make time for her family. Yet early experiences highlighted how these choices are scrutinised.
Mac Kam described being inspired by programming that actively addresses single parenthood. A festival whose mission is to combat violence and inequality against women* integrates ‘workshops, games, and performances created by and for children’. This strategy of animating activities for kids during daytime hours has been reproduced in multiple festivals in Belgium, notably Les Volumineuses; it contributes to a sense of welcome for participants with children, and lets parents not miss out on the opportunity to immerse themselves in the festival.Footnote 22 Taken together, these accounts illustrate how professional legitimacy is distributed along lines of gender, race, sexuality, disability, and body size, leaving FINTA people at the intersections of multiple marginalised identities most often positioned as having to prove professional competence that others are presumed to hold.
Sexualisation of workplace situations
Experiences of sexualisation and sexism in the workplace remain pervasive. As Lætitia explained, ‘I tend to push those experiences aside, but honestly, there have been so many. As a press agent, I’ve had to face men in positions of power while defending my artist, and instead of calling me attachée de presse, they’d say attachée de fesse. That hurts’.Footnote 23 Such forms of verbal harassment illustrate how gendered dynamics are embedded in professional interactions. Mac Kam recalled that during their years performing, ‘sexist comments, we received plenty of them’. These experiences are not isolated incidents: Luisa highlighted their persistence in live music contexts, observing, ‘This year, there were still comments like: “Play like you’re undressing a woman with your instrument,” or “Why do you play like a girl?” Young musicians hear them, laugh, and repeat them, because that’s the model they’re shown.’
Harassment and violence
All the participants cited here gave their consent to share their experiences, including those of gender-based harassment. Because of the sensitive nature of sharing experiences of violence, these are not attributed to specific people. In the context of discussing the types of workplaces she hopes to see in the future, one participant shared, ‘I also was myself a victim of sexual harassment’. Thinking through the connection between work and personal life for many women*, another person described, ‘work isn’t really separate from our personal experiences, and we’ve all been through a lot of violence, we struggle to find our place, and we struggle to feel legitimate’. A manager navigates seeing her elder colleagues carry forward a way of working in a ‘world that’s very ingrained in patriarchy and forgiving men who are abusive’. Multiple professionals described the need for supports for gendered violence in music workplaces. One participant described the challenges of working at a festival as part of a team that responded to abuse during concerts. She explains, ‘I found myself having to manage sexual harassment and sexual violence. It’s very difficult to respond to those situations’. The impact of this kind of violence warrants further inquiry; it undoubtedly takes a toll on people in the music industry.
Variations in lived experiences
A critical approach to this study’s results shows how differences emerged among respondents. Some participants expressed confidence that an organic change would occur in the sector, while others emphasised the need for active work to make these changes happen. As Alex detailed this subtlety, he believes it is both true that the quality of a person’s work helps them secure future jobs, and that ‘I know there are companies that make a point of aiming for something a bit more gender-balanced’. Flo recognises that venues have started ‘offering us female sound engineers’ to better balance their work teams, but only after their team put in a specific request.
This is further nuanced through varying levels of optimism about new generations of professionals entering the workplace. Luisa has encountered some members of older generations who are ‘deeply misogynistic’ and ‘openly racist’, and wonders, ‘the next generation, maybe they’ll turn out the same way, maybe not’. Her colleague mused, ‘“the new generation will be better because we’re younger.” And I told him, “Sure, but the generation we’re complaining about [shaped us]. That doesn’t just change overnight because we’re younger.”’ Many felt that generational change alone cannot address workplace inequities, such as Cécile, a former music educator and current intern with a festival: ‘we put so much expectation on the younger generation, but without holding the people who are already in positions of power to the same standard.... We need training for those people too’. From her experience when she was early-career, ‘that’s a lot to carry.... It puts a huge weight on our shoulders’.Footnote 24
Mentorship and the restructuring of professional pathways in the music industry
Existing mentorship programmes
In response to research question 2 regarding strategies participants explored, mentorship has so far emerged as the most common intervention, either through informal or formal means. Consistent with much existing research, this study finds a strong emphasis on mentorship as a strategy to address workplace climate (Rodgers Reference Rodgers2010, Bell Reference Bell2015, Buckingham and Ronan Reference Buckingham, McCarthy and Ronan2019), and, as subsequent sections will show, it also posits the microfestival as professional mentorship space. More than a third of interviewees participated in a formal programme as mentor or mentee, the two largest of which are detailed below, and a further quarter had participated in internships and/or informal mentoring. Still others detailed gaps in their education that mentorship might have filled. Crucially, this research suggests that human-scale festivals, such as Ladyfest BXL and Les Volumineuses, can function as professional mentorship when approached intentionally. The demand for these mentorship programmes underscores the broader issues faced by women* in the industry.
The Brussels mentorship programme Les Lianes has its origins in Mewem Europa, a French initiative that expanded to Belgium through Wallonie Bruxelles Musique, with Scivias’ current coordinator as the lead. After the European project ended, the project continued locally: ‘now that we know how to set up a mentorship program, it would be good to do it within Scivias’, Scivias coordinator Sarah Bouhatous explained.Footnote 25 With financial support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, they created their own programme: Les Lianes. This name symbolises growth through connection. In Sarah’s words, ‘the lianas … need to be together to reach as high as possible towards the light … enabling women and gender minorities to create links to rise professionally’. Les Lianes ran from January to June 2023 with ten mentees, FINTA people seeking to develop their careers in music, and ten mentors, experienced professionals eager to share knowledge. Alongside the one-on-one mentoring, Scivias hosted collective workshops focussed on negotiation, advocacy, and fighting impostor syndrome. Other formal initiatives in Belgium, such as Parcours Minigolf, provide FINTA music industry mentees with practical tools like budgeting, contract negotiation, and project development. Like Les Lianes, the programme also enables them to analyse how systemic inequalities manifest in their work environments.
Conversations about the ways gendered expectations influence perceptions of authority, expertise, and visibility infuse these programmes, even as participants gain job skills. The initiative Urban360 reflects these dual goals. Designed for male, female, and nonbinary individuals, the mentorship programme supports those entering or advancing within the music industry. A government-industry partnership, it is led by Céline Kayogera through the nonprofit CLNK in partnership with a Brussels-based jobs initiative. CLNK focusses on professionalising the emerging urban music scene and bridging the gap between artists and industry professionals. Participants are selected through a competitive process and attend full-time, cost-free training organised around five thematic modules: project development, the economics of the music industry, production processes, marketing and communication, and long-term career planning. Open to all applicants, it explicitly trains participants to identify and navigate biases within the sector as part of their professional development.
Alongside such structured programmes, mentorship takes shape through informal networks, workshops, and meet-ups. Intentionality and planning make all the difference, Eva Nasali says: ‘It’s important to create a space where people feel comfortable, and not just stop at “you have to register here to take part in the speed-meeting.” There are really so many possibilities to make it more accessible … it’s really just a question of effort.’Footnote 26 Eva Nasali gave examples of an international festival in Belgium that offers guided walking tours and jogging meet-ups for offstage professionals, creating sustained encounters with more structure than a traditional drinks networking hour.
Festivals focussed on training and supporting emerging professionals, including those in offstage roles, function in a manner that is akin to mentorship programmes. In this sense, working for such a festival becomes a guided form of expertise building, resume development, and networking. Coordinator Manon Bonniel Chalier described Les Volumineuses in this manner: ‘It often happens that other festivals ask, “Who did you work with last time?” as a sound engineer, as a sound technician. And so, we pass along the contact’. Training also happens during the festival, as ‘when we launched the project, we hired a professional videographer. From there, [a trainee] supported [the professional] and gradually trained themself along the way’. Ladyfest BXL offers participating professionals, its director Mac Kam explains, ‘an understanding of concepts that really fall under artistic project management, things they were never taught in school. So there’s a transfer of knowledge at that level.... That is a form of mentorship’. This kind of on-the-job training makes sense in an environment in which school-based programmes do not treat certain technical and management roles in detail, and in which many do not specifically address the unique professional situation of female* and racialised practitioners. While the primary purpose of such festivals is audience enjoyment, professional experience gained through practice is another intentional outcome.
Desire for additional mentorship and education
In many behind-the-scenes professions within the creative industries, female, nonbinary, and racialised professionals face significant barriers to accessing training that is both available and responsive to their specific needs. Céline emphasises that providing targeted education around inequities is useful, as ‘those who are made aware of all these issues and the people they affect are the future actors of the industry’; she hopes this education ‘will lead to consciousness, which will in turn lead to changes in behavior and a better handling of all these issues’.
Juliette underscores the scarcity of formal training, particularly in Belgium, observing that many professionals learn ‘on the job.... It is already a source of precarity to rely on people’s goodwill’. While some programmes exist in artist management or production, she notes that critical roles such as label management, publishing, and booking lack structured pathways, limiting opportunities for professionalisation and international collaboration. Mentorship can partially fill these gaps: Manon describes how beginners gain experience through festival work, with more experienced staff ‘accompanying … and training little by little’, thereby enabling skill development in technical, organisational, and media roles. These practices are particularly valuable for female* and racialised professionals, who often encounter systemic barriers to formalised training.
Importance of role models
Interviewees described early desires to work in music as a passion project, a place to express their creativity and pair it with technical acumen. The absence of FINTA role models was a barrier, yet it motivates some to mentor others after progressing without such representation. Multiple interviewees named being discouraged by not seeing more women* onstage. This impacted Juliette, even in her career trajectory offstage, ‘because that’s the first contact with music scenes, the artists one sees, it would have inspired me more to work in the music sector’. Anne-Sophie reflects, ‘often, people forget about women in technical roles in music’. With the rise of collectives of sound engineers and women* in other related roles, she observes a shift beginning, because ‘it’s not just women on stage, but it’s also women backstage’.
Visibility could play a role in changing minds, interviewees hope. When she was asked to do a video spot about her own career, Lætitia recalled, ‘we got a lot of messages with that kind of visibility, from people who never would have messaged me’, and reflected that the experience ‘had a huge impact’ on her as well. Manon describes visibility as one of the festival Les Volumineuses’ goals: ‘videographers, illustrators, photographers, technicians, the idea is to increase their visibility at events, and on social media’. Working on this festival where technical roles, such as sound engineers and live sound tech roles, are filled by female and nonbinary workers, Manon noted that her team was often asked, ‘where are the tech guys?’ With a knowing laugh, she answers, ‘it’s us, we are the tech guys’. In response to gendered assumptions about workers, the repeated presence of a diverse set of professionals ‘can change perceptions’.
Support for achieving pay equity
Many creative professionals enter the labour market without training in pay negotiation, leaving them vulnerable to undervaluing their work. As Mac Kam explains, many music professionals ‘learn on the job’, and money often remains a challenging subject. Festival organisers attuned to this need sometimes take on the role of breaking this taboo: ‘we will talk about money directly’. This skill gap can also be gendered, as women* and people from intersecting marginalised groups are often less encouraged to negotiate pay, making the absence of training even more consequential.
This lack of knowledge can threaten long-term career sustainability. Céline describes reaching a turning point: ‘I lacked clarity and vision on which administrative and financial strategies to put in place to sustain my activity’. A key lesson was when a mentor taught her to prioritise her own salary, rather than sacrificing it to keep a project afloat: ‘without you, your project doesn’t hold. So for you to be there, you need to be paid’. These testimonies highlight how essential financial and negotiation skills are for fair pay in the short term and career viability over time.
Training responsive to female, gender expansive, and intersectional identities
There is room for improvement in higher education and speciality programmes; participants described encountering bias in schools, or programmes that failed to address gender and race. Céline explains that, when she did her education in production and project management, teachers ‘never talked to me about these questions [of gender bias or racism at work]’. This is problematic because, she notes, it is possible for those who do not experience bias to enter the music industry without questioning it, and to even continue to perpetuate problematic biases. Many call for these topics to be treated sensitively in education, as Juliette said, ‘this should be treated in music school’. If these topics were integrated into graduate programmes, such as cultural management, event planning, and related fields, as Manon recommends, this would allow young professionals to arrive on the job ‘asking, “What is your policy on gender parity? What is your policy on inclusivity? And what measures do you have in place for safer events so that female festivalgoers feel comfortable?”’ Over time, these repeated attitudes could change the workplaces they enter.
Nuanced responses to mentorship programmes
While all participants in this study named positive effects of mentorship and gender-aware education, two concerns did arise repeatedly. The first is managing when spaces are open to all, and when they are curated specifically to people with similar experiences. Flo describes creating multiple participatory events around a performance to try to square this circle: ‘our mediation activities included a bookstore discussion open to everyone, as well as various feminist self-defense workshops. Some of these workshops were specifically designed for women over 50, some for racialized women, some for deaf and hard-of-hearing women, and there was also a general session’. Reflecting on the importance of FLINTA spaces for her, Constance detailed, ‘I just feel safer directly from the get-go’. Eva Nasali described a training space for female* workers: ‘Since it was not a mixed gender space, there was really this atmosphere of closeness that was wonderful.... We all felt very legitimate in being there and in sharing our respective experiences’. Programmes like Urban 360 intentionally include male, female, and gender expansive participants, emphasising that addressing power asymmetries is everyone’s responsibility. These approaches are not opposed but highlight the need to examine the histories and impacts of mixed and separate spaces. Feminist and queer scenes have experimented with intentional space creation based on shared experience, a lineage that is being adapted for mixed-gender and mainstream contexts (Gaston-Bird Reference Gaston-Bird2020; Powers Reference Powers2015).
Secondly, music sector funding is a consistent question. Sarah noted that her organisation was ‘not able to offer a 2024 edition of the mentorship program’. While Scivias is willing to run the programme again in the future, ‘that always depends on the financial support we are able to secure’. Belgian workers expressed concern that shifts in government funding could reduce training and services for music professionals, particularly for FLINTA-focussed projects. A federal worker I spoke with, who asked not to be directly quoted, described concerns about changing government priorities due to recent elections. Belgian projects to level the playing field for FLINTA workers require financial support as well as goodwill; what might happen with a change in government? This second concern about changing political budgets extends to the social sphere as well; it takes buy-in from arts organisations and the public for efforts to really take root. Many venues collaborate with organisations like Scivias, offer professional development on gender balance, and create equity and safety charters. Yet funding bodies rarely assess implementation, so follow-through relies on the voluntary cooperation of administrators. Sarah recommends, ‘It’s something that really needs to be mandated at the political level’. Interviewees emphasised that such requirements could both reward committed teams and encourage those less inclined to act.Footnote 27
Conclusion
To better understand the unique balance between living into their passion for musical projects while navigating gendered constraints in the workplace, professionals themselves offer insights into the situation. Through their experiences, key themes crystallise: alienation; authority and legitimacy being challenged; sexualising the workplace; and gendered violence. These experiences, tied to the local context from which they emerge, provide specifics from which it is possible to connect to larger thematic arcs relevant in and to multiple geographies. Women* with offstage music careers often seek mentorship in music because it provides access, community, and role models in fields where they remain underrepresented. As Tara Rodgers notes, many women she interviewed create ‘community-oriented educational projects’ to address gender inequities (Reference Rodgers2010, p. 17), while Adam Bell highlights the need for more inclusive educational opportunities for women in general, and racialised women in particular, in technical roles in music (Reference Bell2015). Formal mentorship programmes are especially valuable, since ‘strong female role models … are essential to address the gender imbalance’ in audio-engineering (Buckingham and Ronan Reference Buckingham, McCarthy and Ronan2019, p. 6), and research shows that attention to gendered dynamics of education and mentorship can yield positive effects (Armstrong Reference Armstrong2011). At the same time, informal mentorship at festivals and performance series can provide supported entry into professional networks (McKay Reference McKay2015; Deventer Reference Deventer and Newbold2015). Far from only serving the public audience, music festivals are fertile grounds for near-peer mentorship, through which early and later career professionals interact in the music workplace, potentially sharing strategies and learnings along the way. As the examples from Les Volumineuses and Ladyfest BXL demonstrate, festivals can actually function as professional mentorship opportunities when organisers structure them to do so. The ways these festivals are structured matter; progressive, regionally specific programming strategies can increase opportunities for diverse artists, while programming teams (rather than relying on a single programmer alone) are showing promise in positively transforming music events (Leidinger and McGee Reference Leidinger and McGee2024). The new research presented here extends the collective recommendations from these studies, which suggest that women* pursue mentorship not only for skill development but also to navigate systemic barriers in the music industry. Ongoing research could further evaluate the role of on-the-job mentorship through festival performances that incorporate professionalisation structures in their setups.
Consistent with this literature on education and mentorship, Belgian participants generally find positive effects of mentorship, but raise critical questions about separate spaces and potential impacts of political changes. With the base of this research showing that there are indeed gendered differences in work experiences within the Belgian popular music industry, future studies could evaluate if these same thematics appear in related sectors, or trace them longitudinally. More research would do well to examine what makes interventions such as mentorship more or less effective in specific national and regional music sectors, and could delve into questions such as best practice for programme composition and topics covered, programme financing, and long-range results, either alone or compared to other possible interventions designed to improve workplace participation and outcomes. The Belgian case demonstrates an innovative addition to existing literature: the potential that human-scale festivals can have the effect of providing mentorship opportunities for the professionals who work at them, adding a dual function to their audience-facing purpose. When it comes to scrutinising gender and power in the music workplace, Juliette sums it up: ‘it all comes down to not disregarding these issues, as they are fundamental to fostering a sense of belonging for everyone’.
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