"...but here I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way  with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice  as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied  by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction." 
- Virginia Woolf, from A Room Of One's Own

The title of my blog is derived from Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room Of One’s Own, which was based upon two papers read to the Arts Society at Newnharn and the Odtaa at Girton in October 1928. The essay details the relationship between the dedicated space required for a creative profession (in this case writing fiction), and the money required to achieve that space, and the problem of gender inequality and participation in that creative profession. (The essay is still an awesome read today, and you can read it in full for free online at Project Gutenberg.)

So now you no doubt see I draw the bow that in 2015 this conundrum faces women who wish to work in the field of music production. By aligning my subject with a landmark of twentieth-century feminist thought, you would be right to think I am shooting for the moon, but how else does one pursue excellence in anything? The parallels of male controlled spaces and cultural practice in the recording studio and related audio technical fields are simply too resonant for me to leave unexplored. These are admittedly “first world problems” – but music is a powerful cultural practice, and music psychologists and musicologists are still exploring how music both reflects society, and influences society, and indeed the role it plays in healthy brain function. Music is not a trivial form of entertainment.

As I research and educate myself all over again (I have attempted formal tertiary study in the field twice already – nightmare sexist experiences both times), I will no doubt improve my understanding of how few women are breaking into the industry, but the current figure I see being bandied about is that women make up 5% of audio engineering professionals. In my experience so far in sound engineering education contexts, the reality is after a several months of attrition, as the other women become discouraged and drifted away, I found myself the only woman in a room of men. The otherness was ferocious.

By the by, I am breaking the rules of audio culture by attempting to give this voice before I have a mountain of album credits. (Who am I? I am barely a no one. I am not pretending to have credentials that I do not have.) To an extent, the only thing that counts in audio, is audio. (I know that, and now I risk having it “mansplained” to me endlessly). But for women in this field, it might be that one has to describe the mountain just to muster the gumption to attempt to reach base camp. I would hope that the ideas and experiences I sketch here, however messily, are read as they are intended – in the spirit of genuine love for making music. I am muddling along and trying to find my own way, as all creative practitioners must. Be cool and consider the perspective.

This is a lowly blog, as befits this era of divided attention and frantic multitasking. A great deal of the content here will be what is known as a “curated blog”. Some of it will be stuff about audio and studiocraft, and some of it will be stuff about gender politics and participation in the field. But I will also write about my own experiences, when I can, when it is not too traumatic. (Did I mention nightmare?) I will no doubt not be as eloquent as Virginia Woolf, but I am declaring my intentions to aspire. We shall see if writing here might not change my stars.

The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them, or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light. But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon saw that it had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion. I should never be able to fulfill what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever. All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point–a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions–women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as I can the train of thought which led me to think this. Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial–and any question about sex is that–one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here–how, bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders, I pondered it, and made it work in and out of my daily life.

– Virginia Woolf, from A Room Of One’s Own

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