Musical instrument choices and gender – time for change?

In a world in which gender equality issues have been prominent since the late 1960s and with musical education initiatives that promote student autonomy and choice (e.g. Musical Futures) one might expect to see secondary school students choosing which instruments they would like to learn without any gendered preference. Nevertheless, there is still much debate about how the choice of instrument is made and whether this a gendered decision. Should parents and music teachers encourage girls to play the tuba or boys to play the piccolo?  Or do children and adolescents themselves display gendered preferences for specific types of musical instruments, perhaps influenced by their peers? If so, what challenges do these encultured choices pose for music educators in secondary schools?

Research has suggested that boys tend to choose larger, lower-pitched instruments and girls smaller, higher-pitched instruments. This may be familiar to many music educators in primary and secondary education, where the choice has typically included Western classical and pop instruments. However, in a new study,  Steven Kelly and Kimberly VanWeelden explore possible gender associations with world music instruments. They asked 455 middle and high school students on a music summer camp to classify ten world music instruments as feminine or masculine on a 10-point Likert scale. Musicians were split into three groups: one group listened to 45 second clips of each instrument being played a cappella; the second group were shown photographs of each instrument and the third group received audio and visual information about the instruments. The authors found that both boys and girls identified larger instruments such as the Kora and the Zheng as masculine, although the Sitar, despite being large, was only moderately perceived as being masculine. They suggest that one factor influencing student perceptions may be the existing enculturation of gendered choices about Western musical instruments in the USA. This, they point out, means that music educators seeking to lead world music in secondary school settings should be vigilant in developing teaching strategies which avoid cultural stereotypes and gendered choices about which instruments male and female students play.

In a second study, Elizabeth Wrape, Alexandra Dittloff and Jennifer Callahan ask whether trends have changed in the choice of musical instruments in middle schools in the USA.  The researchers wanted to find out whether choices of instruments mirrored existing gender-stereotypes, whether these stereo-types became more rigid as students matured and whether the gender of a student influenced the way in which they categorised instruments. The students were given a simple choice: is this instrument  a boy or a girl instrument?

The findings confirmed previously noted trends: the tuba was perceived to be a boy instrument and clarinet and flute were seen as girl instruments. Overall, students with more in bands described trombone, trumpet and French horn as boy instruments, whilst bassoon and oboe were described as girl instruments. However, among the girls with more experience, there was a strong view that trombone and French horn were girl instruments.  Interestingly, the younger students were less likely to make gendered judgements about their choice of instruments. As other researchers have found, this study confirmed that instrument choices may also be influenced by peer pressure from classmates. Contrary to the authors’ optimism that gender-stereotyping in the choice of musical instruments may not be as prevelant as shown in earlier studies, this study showed that whilst younger students are more open-minded about instrumental choices, gender stereo-types become more apparent as students mature.  The question then remains – what should middle school band leaders and instrumental teachers do – if anything – to try and reduce this gender-stereotyping?

So what happens when students enter higher education? Are musical instruments perceived with similar connotations of gender? Lisa Stronsick, Samantha Tuft, Sara Incera and Conor McLennan set out to investigate how female undergraduate students in a US Department of Psychology  perceived timbre and pitch of nine instruments. Instruments were grouped into threes based upon prior research and described as masculine, neutral or feminine. Participants listened to phrases on each instrument and indicated on a slider controlled by a mouse where they placed the instrument on a male-female continuum. Interestingly, the research team discovered that these female participants were more likely to rate masculine instruments more towards the feminine end of the continuum if they heard high pitched sounds. The authors suggest that this could be explained by the fact that female participants may be more responsive to high pitched sounds. This points towards an important conclusion that gender ratings of musical instruments may be flexible, based upon the gender of participants in the study. In the context of secondary education, one possible implication may be that students should be encouraged to listen carefully to both the pitch and timbre of instruments before making choices about which instrument they wish to play.

Another quite different view, not expressed by any of the authors above, might be that more role models are needed of both sexes to demonstrate that musical instrumental choices do not need to be associated with gender, but rather with a love of learning to play a musical instrument.

Monica Esslin-Peard, University of Liverpool

Following the completion of her PhD in July 2017, Monica joined the Department of Music at the University of Liverpool, UK, as Lecturer in Performance. She teaches on the undergraduate and masters programmes, focusing on performance, style and authenticity, pedagogy and conducting. Her research interests include reflective practice in musical learning, cross-cultural learning with Chinese students and popular music pedagogy.