BY JASMINE MIDDLETON
It shouldn’t have to be a novelty that an educational organisation achieves gender equality across its staff and student base.
But unfortunately, even in 2019, it is.
Much more fortunately, though, are the trailblazing standards that Berklee Online is setting for the music industry. Institutional change needs to come from the top, and CEO Debbie Cavalier has taken on this responsibility wholeheartedly.
Under her direction, Berklee Online is celebrating a steep increase in female enrolment (65 per cent in the past two years — more than two times the number of male enrolments), and credits this to its accessibility and visibility of women in leadership and mentoring roles. This is especially significant considering its wide-reaching influence as the online branch of the world-renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston.
We chat to Debbie and gain some insight into what Berklee Online involves, how they’re illuminating the expansive pool of female talent in music, and why deliberate moves to increase representation are so important.
How does Berklee Online engage with musicians around the world, and what makes this form of study unique?
Berklee Online is unique because – as the world’s largest online music school – our curriculum and world-class instructors are accessible to students from Boston to Brisbane, and everywhere in between, so long as they have an internet connection.
We’re focused on helping students with their career goals and aspirations. As such, we’ve designed our courses and curriculum around project-based learning, where students build a portfolio of professional work in their online courses. Our learning environment is state-of-the-art and the educational experience is rich and engaging.
Our classes are very small: students study with a Berklee instructor and 15-20 classmates of all ages from many different countries. Students taking courses or pursuing their degree through Berklee Online can engage with their classmates and instructors through live video conferencing, audio, video and text-based discussion boards, and by sharing and collaborating on their work.
I’ve seen examples of students collaborating and forming businesses together, continuing their professional relationships long after their Berklee Online programs end.
Being such a wide-reaching and influential force in musical training, what responsibilities do you believe Berklee Online holds in shaping the next generation of musicians?
I think Berklee Online can play a small but important role in the greater music industry by giving people the chance to learn music who might not otherwise, whether that be because of geographical constraints, familial obligations, or work schedules.
We lower the cost and time barriers associated with earning a degree so students can keep working, keep performing, and keep doing what they do while studying anytime, anywhere.
We have approximately 11,000 annual enrolments at Berklee Online, and more than 2 million enrolments in our massive open online courses (MOOCS) through Coursera and edX.
In your role as CEO, you have pushed for a restructuring of staff to increase female representation. What are some of the barriers that female artists have faced in the past, and why does this issue of a male-dominated music industry still exist today?
Berklee recently did a study that looked at the experience of women – and people who identify as women – who work in the music industry. Although there have been some strides and some improvements, more than half of the women surveyed indicated that they felt their gender had affected their employment.
In addition to the #MeToo stories we’ve come to know, there are barriers that women in the music industry face that stem from lack of representation. Those barriers are even greater for women of colour.
Women need to see female role models in leadership positions to inspire their own professional path. This is why we’ve made that a priority at Berklee Online.
In 2006, I was one of only two female leaders on staff. Today, we have nine women in key leadership roles.
Here’s a link to a four-page infographic regarding the Women in the Music Industry Study. Here’s a link to the full study.
With any conscious effort to increase opportunities for women, it’s inevitable that you will be faced with the controversial debate surrounding gender quotas versus selection based on pure “merit”. What would you say in response to those who argue gender quotas go against society’s perceived meritocracy?
I would say that the interest and talent we see from female students at Berklee Online does not match the makeup of the music industry.
In the United States alone, 90 percent of the Grammy nominees since 2013 were male, 98 percent of music producers are male, and 88 percent of songwriters are male.
That simply doesn’t match the interest we see at Berklee, or the female interest and talent that exists in the world. Is a system that is based on merit actually accurate if it is based on the merit of a homogeneous pool of candidates?
We strive for a gender-balanced community at Berklee Online and hope that the larger music industry will follow.
As well as increasing female staff representation, Berklee Online has seen a 65 per cent increase in female enrolment over the past two years. To what do you attribute this?
I’ve challenged all our hiring managers to be deliberate about trying to fill all open positions with even representation from all genders. So, it’s not just up to me, it’s a philosophy that our entire team buys into and is celebrated when a candidate pool is evenly distributed.
The 65 per cent increase in female student enrolment is a result of a cascading effect when more women are in leadership roles, instructing our courses, developing our courses, admitting our students, and advising our students — the result is more female students at Berklee Online.
Additionally, we’ve re-examined our marketing messaging and imagery to ensure female students can see that we provide a welcoming environment and that they will succeed as students at Berklee Online.
You have presented quite the success story. How do you hope for this initiative to further influence face-to-face studies and other facets of the music industry?
I hope that online schools and non-online schools continue to diversify and that we might serve as an example that it is possible. I think academia is trending positively, but the music industry still has a lot of room for improvement.
We’re continuing to inform our decisions at Berklee Online by doing surveys and research for new programs. We want to be sure that the programs we offer — the courses, certificate programs, and degree programs — resonate just as much with a potential female student body as male.
We’re trying to build programs that are market-driven, which means we’re considering what potential female students are looking for from us that we don’t currently offer.
I hope that more women who want to study music are able to, and that the credentials they earn get them in the door to more places and help them advance their career aspirations in the music industry.
Do you believe that other organisations should be doing more to make this change?
Absolutely. The music industry is just one sector that lacks female representation. I believe other organisations will see a similar trend by hiring more women and balancing the gender makeup of their teams.
I’ve always been inspired by the Boston Symphony’s approach to increasing women in their orchestra by doing blind auditions — by auditioning people behind a screen so the director wouldn’t see if they were auditioning a male or female. Initially it failed, because apparently they could hear the heels of the women walking.
Then they had everybody take off their shoes and all of a sudden, the selection became more gender-balanced, and that inspired other orchestras. To me, this example speaks to intentionality and the results that you can get by being intentional around hiring and diversity.
Here’s a link to various articles about blind auditions.
Visit the Berklee Online website to learn more about the institution and its courses in music.
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