Preparing Women for Musical Leadership: Student and Faculty Voices

This chapter considers educational opportunities in the university classroom and beyond to prepare future women leaders for diverse careers in music. Through personal testimonials, recent graduates of an American undergraduate music business programme advocate for the curricular transformations necessary for young women to envision their place as musical leaders; insist upon equal compensation, treatment, and opportunity; and foster equity and inclusion throughout their careers and across a broad spectrum of professional settings, from performing arts administration to the commercial music industry. Their former professor offers a reflection on their insights and the ongoing challenges of defining and achieving diverse representation and equity and inclusion in higher education. We have modelled this chapter after Parker and McDonald’s contribution to Movements in Organizational Communication Research: Current Issues and Future Directions, and we are indebted to their approach to critical reflexivity on difference, diversity, and inclusion for informing our concluding thoughts on intersectional leadership and the responsibilities of the privileged to institutionalise justice and equity in music.