Raising women’s participation in musicians’ union leadership and membership in Latin America has proven to be an enduring challenge. FIM, the international representative organisation for musicians, asked me to devise strategic directions on gender equality in the region. In order to develop policies and actions to foster equality within the sector, I raised funding to conduct a survey and organise a regional women-only training and brainstorming event.
During the event I led the drafting of the Declaration and Action Plan on Gender Equality in the Music Sector to support trade unions to achieve greater gender equality. These included commitments i) to increase female leadership from 20% to 40% and membership from 6% to 30% by 2025; ii) to monitor developments through regular surveys, and iii) to include gender-based clauses in collective agreements. In order to achieve these objectives, the document includes low-cost actions drawing on in-house resources. Participants reported that they had added new perspectives on gender equality (91%), had made useful new contacts (97%), and felt empowered to implement new ideas within their organisation (95%).
I presented the Declaration and Action Plan at the following regional event in Bogotá, held 4 weeks later, with a view to integrating the gender equality strategy within the overall development strategy in Latin America. The strategy was unanimously adopted by political union leaders across Latin America and has subsequently been used as a template by the Mayor of Bogota, United Nations and the International Labour Organisation for their gender-equality work in the region.
The project was funded by the Swedish organisation Union To Union and was carried out in Montevideo with the support of the local musicians’ unions AUDEM and FUDEM. A report of the event was submitted to an edited volume (Routledge) and presented at the International Women and/in Musical Leadership Conference organised by Open University.