Women learning audio

There are more women getting into all facets of audio. A friend of mine, Jan McLaughlin is a notable production sound mixer based in NYC. I did a video interview/chat with here a while back in case anyone wants to see it. One of the things we talk about is women in audio.

https://youtu.be/rQ81-ErlNhM
 
I saw that same article on the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/enterta...ent-there-more-women-working-in-audio/537663/

I've seen a couple of utility and boom ops that are women, but I'm mostly in the low rate commercial area and it is all men. If I could ever choose help on a shoot it would be a woman so I didn't have to deal with distrust when laving younger women. More to the point, I don't think the article recognizes the fact that many men get into audio because they start out "performing" music. For whatever reason, more men are in bands or are interested in playing in bands. About half of the audio guys I have met on set started out as music producers and went to school for music production. I don't subscribe to the idea that men and women are just wired differently, but I do have a hard time explaining the vast difference in participation in the audio field.
 
Here in LA, there are a few women sound mixers I have worked with. I think it's great having women in the crew, I wish we had more of it. It's usually hair and makeup are women, we have some female PAs, but I rarely see women behind the camera, gaffers, grips, although there are a few women ACs around. But very few women DPs. I am lucky that two of my best clients are women producers and I love working with them, they are great to collaborate with, so creative, so little ego, and they are generally a bit more creative than the male producers, although not always.

As far as DVXUser and other forums, if you look at a lot of posts through the viewpoint of a woman, it's no wonder there no women posting here. Too many posts are blatantly sexist or just contain attitudes and content that as women, they are offended. I can't blame them for not posting here much. I've seen on other boards where women post, the guys are just condescending to them or leg humpers and they just try to be sexual with the women in comments. A lot of guys just have issues with thinking of women as their equals and their contemporaries, even in 2017. It's sad.
 
In our classes, there is about a 13:1 to 15:1 ratio of men to women, and some of the women are our best students. Certainly not a case of they can't do it, just don't want to do it (as our department honoree list will show). Honoree's are probably about 3:1 or 4:1 over the last 15 years. Students in the Honors program (different from honoree) are about 2:1 which says that we (a) don't get a lot of honors level students through our program, and (b) when we do there is likely to be a woman among them.
 
I saw more women on the post side of things. From the manufacturing/dealer side of things I see more younger women getting into production sound, which is a very good thing.
 
When I went into film (1996 about) it was a big boys club. I came out of theatre and had worked for more women than men at that point and it was a bit of a shock. When I went to Skywalker there were a bunch more women editors. I was talking to one I knew well and mentioned that things seemed to have improved. She was an FX editor, her response was "and what kind of editors are they?" And I had to say mostly dialog and ADR. THen she asked what sound editors are not eligible for Oscars...

However since then, ~~2000, a fair number of those dialog and ADR editors have moved up to supervising sound editors.

When I taught I would warn the women that they were going to have to work harder, it wasn't fair but it was the reality. I think it has changed a bunch since the early 2000's. It's not a level playing field but it is a lot more level and that alone will make it more level as time goes on.

As J.J. Walker pointed out in his excellent "defense" equal opportunity. Most jobs you get are because someone who knows you saw the opening and told you about it. Till the workforce is balanced a lot of jobs just wont be available to the groups that are not IN the workforce.

I know a fair number of women in sound post. Not sure why they are so under represented on this list. Or maybe they are just not posting?
 
From my observations, it seems like women tend to participate less frequently in production forums in general (relative to the amount of women on set). I have a feeling this is because forums (such as this) tend to focus more on the technical side of things. Techincal audio specifically (not including talent) doesn't seem to attract a lot of female interest, not sure if it's perhaps nature that women (in general) tend to have more of an interest in the visual side of things. Even when it comes to video production and photography, an argument can be made that lot of women apporach things more artistically rather than from a technical standpoint. I haven't seen any evidence that it's a systemic problem. That is, as a wole, I don't see industries or culture holding women back or deterring them from pursuing a career in sound.
 
puredrifting said:
As far as DVXUser and other forums, if you look at a lot of posts through the viewpoint of a woman, it's no wonder there no women posting here. Too many posts are blatantly sexist or just contain attitudes and content that as women, they are offended. I can't blame them for not posting here much. I've seen on other boards where women post, the guys are just condescending to them or leg humpers and they just try to be sexual with the women in comments. A lot of guys just have issues with thinking of women as their equals and their contemporaries, even in 2017. It's sad.
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It would be great if you would provide an example of this on DVXuser. I haven't experienced this here but if I did I would stand right along side you in condemning it.
 
"It would be great if you would provide an example of this on DVXuser. I haven't experienced this here but if I did I would stand right along side you in condemning it."

- Same here, but I have not seen that either. However, I only frequent the Location Sound / Post Audio group here.
 
I realized that I just assume that when I read a post, the post was written by a male. That may not even be true. There is no gender identifier on this website. Perhaps just the implied assumption that this is an almost entirely male driven board makes it less likely that females will post here. Over on JWSound it really feels like a male driven board.
 
The only forum I frequent that has a small but regular number of women posting is the Fujix-forum https://www.fujix-forum.com/forums/ and even then they are under represented compared to the number of women who own, use, and make their living with the Fuji X cameras. A general statement is that women do not generally use forums for information or social exchange, they find those things in other places. Why is the part I don't know.

Now as to women getting into any aspect of audio, I think that being a male dominated field of employment, it is more difficult for women to get started unless they exhibit skills far surpassing those of the men they are competing with. I also think there are far fewer women trying to get into these jobs which again skews the results. Our first semester freshman class this year has a surprising number of young women, maybe 1 out of 5 which is a pretty big ratio.
 
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