Page 668 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

When it comes to education, major strides have also been made. The Royal Northern
College of Music (RNCM), one of the leading places in the world to study conducting,
has seen a gradual increase in the number of female applicants to its postgraduate
programme – so much so that in the coming academic year there will be a 50/50
gender split for the first time.

Elsewhere, at the Royal Academy of Music, the gap between undergraduate and
postgraduate study is being bridged by its head of conducting, Sian Edwards, with a
programme for women considering applying for a master’s in orchestral conducting in
the UK or abroad.

Yet for all these gains, other statistics at job level still make an uncomfortable read. At
the Royal Philharmonic Society’s last count, only two British orchestras had a female
principal conductor, and only six women conductors had titled roles out of several
hundred conductors on the staff of professional British orchestras. Most tellingly, only

22 of the 371 conductors represented by British agents were female – a woeful 5.5 per
cent.

As we edge away from a period of headline-grabbing firsts, perhaps the real challenge

now is maintaining momentum as the story becomes more nuanced, the imbalance
less easy to define. “It’s not quite as rosy as it would seem,” Farnham says.

The Royal Opera House has run several courses for women conducting since 2018 –
several of these she herself has taught – “but you need that translated into jobs”.
Progress has been made, and many in the industry are working hard to keep things
moving, but the gender ratio of women conductors in UK orchestras is still well under
10 per cent – a percentage that has been on pause for some time.

“There’s no quick fix,” she says. Anything that relies on education and training needs
“time, commitment and imagination”.