This is a short but important essay on a very stupid cultural phenomenon in Denmark. It was originally intended for my more Danocentric blog but the prevalence of this particular stupidity across the western world seemed to warrant its being posted here instead.
State-funded Danmarks Radio (DR) is reporting that the Danish government is prepared to spend almost a quarter of a billion kroner (about 36 million US dollars) on a “music action plan” to get more women into the music business.
The article, in Danish, is here.
The first focus area in the agreement is equality. More specifically, the parties to the agreement want "more women to pursue a career in music"…
This must be ensured, among other things, by considering the gender distribution. Both when working to spread Danish artists abroad and on a completely local level, when regional venues put together the poster.
There’s no explanation why the sponsors want more women to pursue a career in music. The article treats the premise as a given: of course there need to be more women in music!
(On a side note, the disastrous performance of Denmark’s male entrant in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest—for which DR is bearing some blame in the parts of the Danish press that care about such things—may not be entirely unrelated to DR’s sudden passion for female musicians.)
The proposed plan will attempt to achieve sex equity in the music branch by requiring music venues to publish how many male and female artists they feature, and by withholding government support from venues that don’t do so.
The requirement must help create awareness. But it will not have consequences for the small venues if the gender balance is very skewed, states Culture Minister Jakob Engel Schmidt.
“There has been a tendency for women to have a harder time in music than men do,” he says.
“By asking (the venues) to pay attention to how many men and women they have on their stages, there may be some arrangers who think: Wow, now we’ve had a male artist ten times in a row, maybe it’s time to find a woman?” says Jakob Engel Schmidt.
Yeah, maybe. But what venues really want is artists who have a draw. Female musicians who can fill a club or concert hall would surely be welcome at any venue. Is there a concert house in Denmark that would turn up their noses at Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, for example, simply because they’re women?
The article goes on and on like this, talking about the barriers to women in music (in Denmark) and the need to smash through them. Apparently women are only getting 10% of all music royalties paid out in Denmark, for example, and that’s obviously a terrible thing that we must restructure everything and spend vast amounts of money to correct.
The article directs readers to a report that “shows which barriers women face in the Danish music industry.”
That report—more specifically, a DR article about the report—is here (and is also in Danish).
We’re informed that “The report was prepared by DR and the Bandakademiet and is called 'Women in music - an investigation of the gender imbalance in the Danish music industry'.”
Let’s not get all hung up in the details. There are plenty of reasons why women are under-represented in the Danish music industry, some good, some bad, some stupid.
So what?
If we need to address gender imbalances in particular trades, wouldn’t it make more sense to begin with those that employ the most people first, and then gradually work our way down? I mean, how many professional musicians are there in Denmark to begin with? Relative to butchers, I mean, or bakers, or—well, never mind the candle-stick makers, how about roofers or masons?
The tendency to insist on gender equality in the workplace has a very boutiquey feel to it. Douglas Murray talks about this phenomenon quite frequently: we’re always hearing about gender disparities in glamorous, high-profile fields: movies, for example, and board rooms, and in professional sports, but we rarely hear a peep about disparities in plumbing, or mining, or the timber industry.
So I dug up an altogether different Danish report: “Men and Women in the job market 2020.”
It was put out by the Danish Ministry of Employment (current minister: Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen, a woman).
Before I get to my findings from their data, here are their headline findings, found on page one of the report:
This note contains gender-segregated data for the labor market. The main conclusions of the note are:
Men generally have higher employment and labor force participation rates than women. However, among immigrants—both from Western and non-Western countries—women have higher employment and labor force participation rates than men.
Men have lower unemployment rates than women and return to work more quickly.
Women generally have a higher level of education than men (age group 30-64).
Women have more sick leave than men regardless of the sector.
On average, women have 0.3 more sick days than men due to child illness (average 2013-2018).
Mothers took an average of 297.5 days of parental leave with maternity benefits, while fathers took 48.4 days in 2018 (in cases where both parents took leave).
The average retirement age for women was 64.5 years in 2018, and 66.3 years for men.
The standard calculated hourly earnings were 15% lower for women (241.5 DKK) than for men (276.9 DKK) in 2018.
From 2013-2018, the gender pay gap has decreased in all sectors.
Denmark has a high employment rate and low unemployment for both men and women compared to international standards.
Yeah yeah yeah, duly noted.
Let’s jump right to Table 4 “Employment by sex and branch, 2018.” Here’s the chart:
Sorry for the Danish. Here are the highlights in English:
The “Farming, timber, and fishery” branch employs about 70,000 Danes: 78% men, 22% women.
The “Industry, raw material extraction, and utilities” branch employs around 330,000 Danes: 71% men and 29% women.
“Construction and civil engineering” employs about 170,000 Danes: 90% men and 10% women.
How much is the Danish government prepared to spend to get more women into farming, construction, and industry?
Meanwhile, look at “Public administration, education, and health.” That’s 29% men and 71% women. A complete inversion of the stats in the other sectors.
And yet that branch employs about a third of the entire Danish workforce—including almost half of all employed women in Denmark (and only about 17% of working men). Nearly 900,000 Danes in all.
That’s a hell of a disparity for such a massive part of the labor market. It’s also the branch over which the government exerts the most control with respect to hiring. And they’re going to go after other branches?
How much are we prepared to invest to get more men into those fields? How hard should we punish the government, schools, and hospitals for their obvious sexism?
With all these facts and figures in mind—facts and figures that come directly from the government—why is the Minister of Culture so committed to getting more women in music? Is his daughter a guitarist, or what?
Why not get more women raising pigs, felling trees, mining, paving roads? Why not try to get more men in teaching and public administration?
I’ll tell you why: because women are physically weaker than men and therefore better suited to office work than manual labor. Also—and this is a point Jordan Peterson often makes—men and women have different interests. They just do.
Because men and women are, and always have been, and always will be different.
And vive le difference.
One might also note that the area of music occupies a very modest component of the total workforce (being just one (small) sub component of the group called “kultur, fritid og anden service” which itself comprises only about 135.000 people. Whereas the “Public administration, education, and health.” as you note is a giant bucket category, where any of the three sub groups listed surely merit their own entries by sheer size alone.
Visibility of the different groups is also widely different. No child growing up can avoid being surrounded (if not submerged) by the members of the most women-dominated groups on a daily basis. Anyone interacting with schools, any public administrative function or health care will increasingly meet only women. Meanwhile, the only interaction most people will have with “bygge og anlæg” will be when passing a road construction crew while driving a car.
The musicians will be visible primarily to the culturally active segment of the population who attends concerts, reads Politiken and can afford to spend time inventing boutique problems that require someone else’s money to solve. I suspect that is in no small part why this particular area suddenly got singled out.