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Originally Posted by Zenith  I was searching for a thread dedicated to women in audio on this site, and I have yet to find one (even though there are plenty dedicated to engineers' bitching girlfriends/wives)...
Considering there is a nominal amount of anonymity on here, I am looking forward to some honest (and maybe painful) answers to this question:
Do you think women are as capable as men when it comes to engineering?
I am an instructor of audio engineering and music production at a fairly well known training facility. I love what I do and I am damn good at it - However, I have noticed that it takes me a little more time to earn the respect of my (mostly male) students as apposed to the other instructors. After they figure out that I am well versed in the art of recording, they sometimes hold me in higher esteem than my male coworkers. I've taught at least a thousand students and have witnessed this phenomenon over and over again... What gives fellas?
Keep Rocking,
- Zenith |
First off I think women are equal to men in the studio.... Like someone else said if your good your good, if your bad your bad.
Statistics also show that women in general have better, longer lasting hearing then men... however this statistic may be based on he fact that men tend to do more physically demanding, and noisy work then women do... If so as women are liberated more and more and start doing the same work that men do, this will not apply. But for now this is what they say....so that right there is one reason why a woman might actually have an advantage over a man.
ANYWAYS now that we have established that I personally believe that men are equal to women and vice versa here is my opinion on your situation, and the situation of women in the recording industry in general.
Women have come a long way in some ways and they haven't in other ways. I hate to say it but when I went to high school it was 99% guys in electronics, 99% guys in autobody class, 99% guys in woods class, 99% Girls in Cosmotology, 99% Girls in Family studys..... You get the point.... society still plays a huge role on what we become based on our sex. More guys join bands when they are young , more guys take electronics blah blah blah.
That being said it is obvious that, the main reason why the recording industry is mostly men IS NOT because women aren't able to preform as well as men in the studio. Thankfully these days, as a women you can choose to do what you want to do...... you just have to want to scrape the shit off your windshield and find out what you can actually do aside from having a baby and a husband, which is sometimes easyer said then done i think.
One thing I have observed from the women I have know in the industry which is a sad trend (from my observation) is that it is easy for them use there sex to there advantage to move ahead quickly. I have seen women advance in big studios very quickly and be favored pretty much for no reason other then the fact that they are female.... and then eventually they just hit a brick wall because they never took the time to actually learn and evolve properly. To me this would be considered "relying on others" which Stevil also said most of the women he knows through music have taken this route.
Unfortunately this is a very easy and tempting route to take and from my observations it is a route that some of the already very few woman in the industry will take. And as I said before the unfortunate thing about taking that route is that you don't actually learn yourself and you don't actually get better at what you do.....From my observations alot of these females end up being paid runners on bigger projects and don't end up going any further then that. They don't end up assisting, they don't end up engineering there own projects. They just get fast acsess to important projects and end up being runners.
And whats wrong with that? Basically that these women may have the potential to be better engineers then the onces they are running for. However to do that you have to do it yourself, pay your dues, learn, evolve...
Unfortunately for women, there are a-lot of sexist assholes who easly assume that any woman in the industry must have slept her way to where she is or used there gender to there advantage. It's terrible.... it's not fair... it should not be tolerated.... but this is what happens.
That might explain why some of your students take time to warm up to you... the thing is no matter what people think you did to get where you are.... if your a good engineer it will eventually show. Once again a very terrible thing..... but I think its true.
Aside from that I am sure there are other reasons as well...... Nerds are easily intimidated by women for example..... there scared.
Moral of the story is...... If your good your good if your not your not.... if you have the brains, the passion to learn, the drive to stick with it..... sex doesn't matter.