Unsung women

I have to confess that I had not heard about Blue Monday until last week (despite being familiar with the post festive season depression that seeps into the month of January) so I did welcome positive nuggets of news amongst the gloom, as well as some food for thought. First off was identifying the amazing yet anonymous tower crane driver featured in the BBC documentary on the major works transforming the world famous Claridge’s Hotel in London. It was great to highlight Michelle Mackey, project engineer with contractor McGee who carried out the extraordinary ground works to create a new four storey basement and also, in later episodes, the women interior designers for the suites in the four new top storeys, not to mention the state-of-the-art spa.

But who is the woman driving the huge crane, I was shouting at the television, as she delicately positioned eye wateringly expensive brick facades and a huge plate glass window high above the Mayfair streets. Well people, thanks to LinkedIn and connection to the indomitable crane operator Katie Kelleher, I now know that the tower crane driver at Claridge’s is Select’s Lindsey White. It would have been be nice to see Lindsey acknowledged, not only for her skills but also to demonstrate the range of careers that construction offers women.

The next revelation was hearing some unfamiliar but wonderful music on Radio 3 and discovering that it was written by Louise Farrenc, a prolific composer, virtuoso pianist, inspirational teacher (Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatory for 30 years), author, admired by Berlioz and Schumann – not to mention co-founder with her husband of a leading music publishing house in Paris. As a music lover as well as gender champion, I confess to being embarrassed by not knowing about her, especially when discovering that after being paid less than her academic male counterparts for many years, in 1850 Louise Farrenc demanded - and got - equal pay.

Just a few hours after discovering Louise Farrenc, there was more focus on gender equality in the music world following the premiere of the film Tár, with Cate Blanchett in the eponymous role of an international conductor. Whilst some bemoan her characterisation as an autocratic and ruthless person, (i.e. giving the wrong impression of women), real life conductor and author Alice Farnham welcomed the film for shining a light on the “abuse, fragility and allusion of power” in the orchestral world.

Alice was therefore delighted by the appearance of Cate Blanchett at the launch of her book In Good Hands: The Making of a Modern Conductor, part of her campaign to encourage more women of all ages into conducting - she leads WoCo (Women Conductor) workshops around the world. Alice cites a 2014 survey showing that the gender ratio of conductors holding titled positions with professional UK orchestras was a mere 1.4% – a figure even lower than the lamentable 2 percent of women working in the construction trades and crafts in the UK.  The same report shows that in Germany, of the 27 artistic directors and chief conductors identified by the survey, none were women. 

The low figure of women in leadership roles in music is intriguing, because a well-used management tool is to liken the leadership skills of orchestral conducting to construction management, one I have often used myself, including in a regular lecture on diversity and leadership for the post graduate course in Interdisciplinary Design in the Built Environment at Cambridge. A favourite example is to compare conducting the Thomas Tallis motet (40 voices singing different tunes) to the complexities of delivering a construction project to time and budget.

I also saw powerful real-life examples of this relationship during the time I was chair of the development group of The London Mozart Players (LMP) the UK’s longest established chamber orchestra. In addition to acclaimed concerts and recordings, the LMP delivers Podium, a unique interactive session using the classical orchestra as a metaphor for leadership and teamwork in the business world.

Another management technique from the music world is ‘blind auditioning’, in the hope of removing gender bias by asking players to perform behind a curtain.  After adjustment (the sound of women’s shoes apparently was a give-away), there has certainly been an increase in the number of women at player level in international orchestras. The Berlin Philarmonic allowed women in 1982, one hundred years after it was formed. But it was another 15 years before the Vienna State Opera allowed women to audition for a place  – and when the harpist Anna Lelkles who had played with them for 26 years finally received formal recognition and full pay.

So what do the low numbers of women in senior conducting roles tell us? Is it a pipeline issue, and a combination of more women players and initiatives such as WoCo will eventually start turning up the dial? Or perhaps, despite the feeling that we have a long way to go with gender equality, it may be that construction can contribute gender insights to the world of music, as well as learn from it. After all, the percentage of women at board level in construction contracting companies now averages 25%, way ahead of senior women in the conducting world.

The LMP is the only orchestra in the UK that is managed both operationally and artistically by the players, drawing parallels with some of the innovative and inclusive construction businesses that are employee owned or family run. The LMP was also the first orchestra in the world to appoint a woman artistic director, the acclaimed conductor Jane Glover who has done much to expand and develop the orchestra’s innovative programming.

So hearing about the low numbers of women conductors has certainly given me food for thought and an incentive to explore more, including women composers (the score for Tàr was by Iceland’s Hildur Guðnadóttir, a classically trained cellist who also plays with electronic bands and has won numerous awards for her film and tv scores including Joker ). Meanwhile, let’s make sure that women making their way in the male dominated world of construction are recognised, including those like Lindsey White, who is literally at the top of her game.