http://www.womensaudiomission.org/about/
Women's Audio Mission, or WAM for short, is an organization that promotes interest, opportunities, and inspiration to women and girls in the audio engineering community. They run several programs that work as an introduction to audio and STEM fields for young girls, regardless of their cultural background. Their website goes on to list some facts about the current state of representation;
"1. Less than 5% of the people creating the sounds, music and media in the daily soundtrack of our lives are women.
2. The alarming 70% decline in women/girls enrolling in college STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math) programs since the year 2000."
It's a sad fact that gender discrimination is still a relevant issue in 2017. The word "multiculturalism," when looked at literally, appears to be about the interloping of the world's many localized cultures, but in practice relates to the recognition of underrepresented and neglected minorities. Women really shouldn't represent a culture/minority, but under this definition they seem to fit right in. Specifically in the audio engineering field, women are few and far between. The unfortunate fact of the situation is that men have monopolized a creative field, which means that only about half of society's potential creative content is being realized. WAM works to help destroy the field's gender gap, and reintroduce a sense of multiculturalism.
This idea relates with the Encyclopedia of American Studies' article on Multiculturalism in many ways. The second paragraph states "Multiculturalism promotes the idea that diverse groups should be able to participate fully in the national culture while maintaining important aspects of their community cultures. It assumes that ethnic and cultural diversity enriches the national community because of the contributions made to it by myriad groups." The concept of a "national culture" directly correlates with the audio engineering field as a whole, and women are unfortunately the "diverse group." Their participation would undoubtably enrich the field, as they make up roughly half of the human population. The article also has a section on Multicultural Education. It states: "Important goals of multicultural education include improving the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, ethnic, language, and income groups and helping all students to develop democratic racial and ethnic attitudes." WAM is a form of Multicultural Education. Just its name and essence alone are enough to show a child that there is a problematic divide in today's industry. It provides young girls with the courage and support to break these barriers and take the field back into human hands.
This idea relates with the Encyclopedia of American Studies' article on Multiculturalism in many ways. The second paragraph states "Multiculturalism promotes the idea that diverse groups should be able to participate fully in the national culture while maintaining important aspects of their community cultures. It assumes that ethnic and cultural diversity enriches the national community because of the contributions made to it by myriad groups." The concept of a "national culture" directly correlates with the audio engineering field as a whole, and women are unfortunately the "diverse group." Their participation would undoubtably enrich the field, as they make up roughly half of the human population. The article also has a section on Multicultural Education. It states: "Important goals of multicultural education include improving the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, ethnic, language, and income groups and helping all students to develop democratic racial and ethnic attitudes." WAM is a form of Multicultural Education. Just its name and essence alone are enough to show a child that there is a problematic divide in today's industry. It provides young girls with the courage and support to break these barriers and take the field back into human hands.
Wow I had no idea that this program even existed. For a while I was really interested in science but eventually I found a greater love for History. I am pretty sure if one of my science teachers or music teachers would have mentioned this to me I may have gotten involved in the STEM program to combine my love for learning and my interest in music. Alhtough I have chosen to devote my life to the humanities it makes me sad to know that women's role in STEM programs are declining. I have man friends in the sciences who have fun doing things that I will never understand but it makes me happy to know that girls are choosing to have ambitous careers in scinces and engineering. I hope that more girls of all backgrounds can earn about this program and get involved because it is a a great opportunity and a field with a multicultural background will flourish due to the diverse backgrounds and perspetives can be brought to the table.
ReplyDeleteWow, this is pretty interesting. I have noticed that most of the music production these days is done by men. However, I also have never met a woman who's dream was to produce music. I feel like this program is great for young girls to gain a sense of knowledge as to recording technology and the engineering and science behind it. In theory though, I feel as if this is similar to comparing the amount of men to women in fields such as social work/child protection. Therefore, I feel like if women want to get their hands dirty in this field that they can more than likely accomplish it. Awesome program though, and in the long run will bring more women into this field.
ReplyDeleteI had heard the abbreviation STEM before but didn't know what it stood for. It's interesting to find out that less than five percent of women produce music, when there are so many artists out there on top, like Beyonce, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Molly Grey... Not saying they don't produce their own lyrics, but they definitely don't produce their own media sounds, music and media along with lighting and all that. I checked out the website, the stats are very unexpected. It makes you wonder why there was a large decrease from the last decade of women in the STEM programs in college. I wonder what the stat is based off of because a large portion of education majors are girls and they are studying science and math. Definitely, I agree with the engenerring and tech portion of that stat, that you rarely hear girls majoring in those. As multiculturalism spreads and societies norms modernize, I see women studying those and majoring in those topics in the future. Just as women never were doctors, or factory workers, or even "workers" across the board, as decades go by, norms change. It's so nice that you chose a topic on something that interests you about women.
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