‘Mothering the artist’: Women artist managers crafting an occupational identity in the Flemish music industry

Abstract

Drawing on Joan Acker's notion of the ideal worker (1990) and Karen Ashcraft's notion of the 'glass slipper' (2013), this paper investigates the organising practices that gender the occupation of artist manager and the music industry, and how women artist managers construct an identity in an occupation that is tailored on a male ideal manager, made to fit a man's shoe. Empirically, we draw on thirteen semi-structured interviews with nine women artist managers, two women former artist managers, and two women former students of Music Management. In line with existing literature, our findings show that the Flemish music industry is organised around practices that reflect hegemonic masculinity, and that women managers mimic many of these practices to fit the ideal manager, and, although they see the gender inequality, they do not challenge it. At the same time, they construct an occupational identity by reframing stereotypical feminine competences as indispensable for being a good manager. By making a business case for these competences, they, however, paradoxically also reproduce those same notions of gender that they aim to overcome.