While women have been shown to have just as much musical talent as men, the musical world is one of the many arenas where women have often been held back or undercut.
The story goes that in the 18th century, Mozart even seems to have taken credit for some compositions that actually belonged to his sister, Maria.
The world can be a harsh place for women but International Women in Music Day is here to honor the talented women who have so much to offer and who often have to fight harder to get noticed.
International Women in Music Day Timeline
Hildegard of Bingen Composes Sacred Music
The Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen writes and circulates her liturgical songs, later collected as the Symphonia, making her one of the earliest named women composers in Western music.
Louise Farrenc Joins the Paris Conservatory Faculty
French pianist and composer Louise Farrenc is appointed professor of piano at the Paris Conservatory, later securing equal pay with male colleagues and gaining recognition for her symphonies and chamber works.
Florence Price Breaks a Symphonic Barrier
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra premieres Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor, marking the first time a major American orchestra performs a work by a Black woman composer.
Blind Auditions Begin Reshaping Orchestras
Major U.S. orchestras expand the use of screened, or blind, auditions, a change that research later shows significantly increases the hiring of women players in classical ensembles.
Marin Alsop Leads a Major American Orchestra
Conductor Marin Alsop is named music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, widely noted as the first woman to lead a major American symphony orchestra in the United States.
Study Exposes Gender Gap in Popular Music Credits
A University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report finds that women make up only 22 percent of artists, 12 percent of songwriters, and 2 percent of producers on popular songs from 2012 to 2017.
Global Streaming Data Shows Rising Female Presence
Analysis by the World Intellectual Property Organization reports that tracks by women account for about 30 percent of the most‑streamed songs worldwide in 2024, up from 16 percent in 2017, indicating gradual gains in visibility.
History of International Women in Music Day
International Women in Music Day dates back to 2008. By the time 2020 rolled around, it was included in celebrations that were put forth by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
The event was scheduled in the month of March to correlate with the United Nations International Women’s Day, which always takes place on March 8.
The purpose for the day encourages the promotion of and showing appreciation for the women who have made an impact on the music world, despite what is often a glass ceiling that holds them back.
Much of the discussion around this day relates to the need for the gender gap in the music industry to be closed, with women earning their place to have equality in this sector of the entertainment world.
In 2020, even with the pandemic, International Women in Music Day boasted at least 60 different virtual events that took place all over the world, and each year the connections seem to grow larger.
How to Celebrate International Women in Music Day
Women deserve to be shown appreciation for their contributions to the music industry, and International Women in Music Day is just the time to do it!
Get involved with the day, starting with some of these ideas:
Support Women in Music
Whether this means spending time all day listening to those favorite female artists or attending a concert put on by a female band or led by a female orchestra conductor, International Women in Music Day offers a wide range of possibilities for supporting those women in the world of music.
Another great way to support women who are in the music industry might be by getting involved with Women Rock Day that takes place in early January.
Listen to Some Women in Music Podcasts
Learn more about the women behind the industry by listening to some podcasts that have been produced in conjunction with International Women in Music Day.
In collaboration, together the BBC, Danish Radio and the EBU offer a series of podcasts that feature mini-biographies of female composers and their role in the world of music.
In addition, topics include the ways that women composers must fight to get their work heard, as well as how the concept of quality among women’s work in the music industry.
Facts About International Women in Music Day
Blind Auditions Helped Women Enter Major Orchestras
Before the 1970s, major symphony orchestras in North America and Europe were overwhelmingly male, and women were often excluded through biased hiring.
When many orchestras began using “blind” auditions, placing a screen between candidates and the selection panel so only playing could be judged, the likelihood that a woman would advance past preliminary rounds increased significantly and women’s share of seats in top orchestras rose in the following decades.
Women Composers Still Make Up Only a Tiny Share of Concert Programs
Despite centuries of work by women composers, their music remains rare on classical concert stages.
A New York concert project linked to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women highlighted that only about 5 percent of the concert music programmed worldwide is written by women, underscoring how far classical institutions still have to go toward gender parity.
Women Are Vastly Underrepresented Behind the Mixing Desk
While women have increased their presence as performers, they remain strikingly scarce in production roles.
An analysis of 800 popular songs found that the ratio of male to female producers was about 37 to 1, meaning women accounted for only around 2.6 percent of producers on those tracks, even though they were far better represented as featured artists.
Female Artists Still Appear Far Less Often on Hit Records
The same study of 800 popular songs found that male artists outnumbered female artists by roughly 3.6 to 1, with women making up just over one‑fifth of performers.
Women were also credited as songwriters on only about 12.5 percent of the tracks, revealing a persistent gender gap not only in who is heard on records but also in who shapes the songs behind the scenes.
Louise Farrenc Fought for Equal Pay in the 19th Century
French composer and pianist Louise Farrenc, who became the only woman appointed as a professor at the Paris Conservatory in the 1800s, was paid less than her male colleagues for a decade despite the success of her students.
After a major triumph of her work in 1849, she successfully demanded equal pay in 1850, an early and rare example of a woman in classical music winning a documented salary dispute.
Florence Price Broke a Color and Gender Barrier in U.S. Orchestras
In 1933, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed Florence Price’s Symphony in E minor, marking the first time a major American orchestra played a symphony by a Black woman.
Price had struggled to get her work taken seriously because of both racism and sexism, yet the success of that performance showed that audiences and professionals would embrace orchestral music by women when it was given a prominent platform.
Only a Fifth of Featured Artists but Nearly Half of UK Top‑10 Impact
Industry analysis drawing on British Phonographic Industry data shows that although women are still a minority among charting artists overall, their impact at the top of the UK singles chart has grown.
In 2023, women artists collectively spent 31 weeks at number one and were responsible for about 48.5 percent of all Top 10 singles, indicating that when women do break through, their commercial and cultural influence is substantial.
