Kate Jenkins AO will be a key speaker at the 2024 Australian Women in Music Conference in October.
This year’s two-day event is the fifth Australian Women in Music (AWM) Conference and Awards night, where women are celebrated for their contributions to the music industry.
Kate Jenkins will be “In Conversation” with gender equality expert Alex Shehadie as part of the main speaking event for the conference.
Jenkins is the former Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner and the inaugural chair of the Creative Workplaces Council. She is best known for her leadership in major national reviews and reforms on gender equality, including the Respect@Work report in 2018 on workplace sexual harassment.
Jenkins said she is looking forward to taking part in the conference, which is coming up on 1-2 October this year.
“I’m delighted to join the amazing Australian Women in Music at this annual conference, sharing the work of Creative Workplaces to make music safe, fair and respectful, and examining the role of men to bring this goal to life,” Jenkins said.
“In 2024, equality in music is long overdue!”
Jenkins will be speaking with Alex Shehadie, a thought leader on strategies to increase the representation of women and diverse groups into leadership roles and an expert on the impact of workplace bullying, sexual harassment, racism and other forms of discrimination.
Vicki Gordon is the founding executive producer and program director of AWM. At the core of her organisation is to promote gender equality in Australia’s music industry.
According to a report commissioned by the House of Commons in the UK, women are underrepresented in several sectors of the industry on a global scale. While women musicians reach incredible feats both in Australia and globally, women represent less than a third of top-selling artists in music and only 14 per cent of songwriters internationally.
In 2022, there were just 187 women and non-binary people credited as a producer or engineer on the top 50 streamed tracks. This is compared to 3,781 men.
“The Australian music industry is a vast and complex eco-system which sadly in 2024 continues to promote festival line-ups dominated, sometimes entirely by male artists, male musicians, male techs and male led bands,” Gordon said.
In this year’s Triple J Hottest 100 countdown, just three of the top 10 featured artists were women or non-binary.
A University of Sydney report from 2017 found women represent a third of all employed musicians in Australia. Lead author Associate Professor Rae Cooper described Australia’s music industry as a room with “glass walls” for women, where women “congregate in occupations and sectors where the majority of employees are women”.
Gordon said there is a “flow-on effect” when women aren’t visible in the music industry in the same way that men are.
“The flow-on effect is reflected in the glaring absence of women working as operators and designers in front-of-house audio and lighting, as mixing engineers and in other technical areas, backstage as roadies and behind the scenes,” Gordon said.
The AWM Conference is supported by the Queensland government, who has been backing the initiative since its inception in 2018.
Shannon Fentiman, the Queensland Minister for Health, Mental Health and Ambulance Service, and Minister for Women, said the event reflects an “important conversation” to have, and it is “fantastic to have Kate Jenkins involved”.
“The Miles Government proudly supports Australian Women in Music Awards & Conference Program as a critical space for talented women working across the music industry to gather and share experiences, and demand equity and recognition of their incredible contributions,” Minister Fentiman said.