Women In Music: It’s Brutal Out Here

Two former Music Business students from Edinburgh College, Gillian Morrison and Ashley Stein, are bringing a new one day conference for women and gender minorities to Edinburgh on 6th April

Photo of Calton Hill, Edinburgh by Adam Wilson on Unsplash

“There were very, very few other women in my class,” says Gillian Morrison, remembering her recent experience as a Music Business student. “There wasn’t a lot of female teachers either - it just felt very, very male dominated.”

The knock on effect of this for her as a student was that she often found herself in situations that felt slightly “more intimidating than it really should have been” At networking events, for example; “You’re on edge more. You feel very outnumbered.” 

After finishing her course at Edinburgh College, Gillian joined the institutions artist in residence programme “I wanted to use the opportunity to create something that I would have liked to have had as a student.” She explains, “And give that to the students who are currently doing those similar degrees.” She wanted to create a network “that is fuelled by this kind of conference we’re putting on, so that students coming up can meet each other, women already established in the industry can come along. And it’s just a place to talk about the thing we all kind of think and we talk about in secret to one another in the women’s toilets but never really say out loud like in an open public space. So, it was really important for me to craft that space.”

In putting on the event she has joined forces with another former Music Business student, Ashley Stein, who completed the same programme of study a few years earlier and who, like Gillian, has been working as an artist in residence at the college for a few years now. 

“I started before Covid” she explains “I didn’t really get the chance to do a lot of stuff so they kept me on for a while.” One of the events she was able to put on was “a conference with some funding from Edinburgh University last year, looking at what the music industry would be like post pandemic for women. How we would build it back up.”

The event went really well and “I’d always hoped that I could do something like that again so it was really good when Gillian joined the college and our old lecturer, Mike, asked me to help her out with it [the conference].” 

Women and music and gender and inequality are “kind of like my whole background basically” she explains, adding later that gigs and event management are also an area of expertise for her “and I did a lot of that stuff when I was doing the music business degree as well.”

Gillian was in her first year when Ashley started as an artist in residence. “At that point, I just thought she was a teacher at the college.” she says. Ashley taught a couple of Gillian’s classes on event management “And then obviously Covid happened, and then I finished my degree and I came back and I’m like ‘Oh, she’s a person and a peer! That’s really cool!’ I’d known of her before but I’ve kind’ve got to know her through this, and it’s been such a delight.”

The event, Women In Music: It’s Brutal Out Here, will take place in Edinburgh on April 6th. There will be an early start to allow for lunch and networking, followed by three panels. The event concludes with an evening showcase from 7:30pm, featuring some of Scotland’s best talent including Megan Black and Niamh-Sunshine.

Niamh-Sunshine is one of the current crop of Music Business students whereas Ashley met Megan Black at a songwriting retreat in January and describes her as “very, very cool” she explains that “She’s kind of what I imagine Janis Joplin would have been like to talk to, as a person?” as well as being “an incredible artist”.

The Creative Women’s Network, the subject of the first of the three panels, was originally started by Gillian alongside the head of the music degrees at Edinburgh College, Annette Chapman, while Gillian was still studying her Music Business degree. “Towards the end of my time at the Uni, or college, I was hearing a lot of stories from other female students about kinda… incidents that were unfortunate” she says, cautiously, “And we went to Annette to deal with it.”

Chapman was “Just as angry as we were about it. So I worked quite closely with Annette over the past year to develop… what was once originally just going to be a group within the college. But it’s quickly expanding it’s outreach to women and female professionals outside of the college, to create it’s own little eco system for nurturing people coming up in the industry and giving people a chance to kind’ve shape the next generation, hopefully make it a little bit nicer.”

"We are here so why are we so invisible to these people? What’s stopping us from headlining Glastonbury? What’s stopping us from getting to Glastonbury at all? Or to get to other places or to be signed to record labels? Why are we seen to not be here when we clearly are?” - Ashley Stein

Another theme to be discussed at the conference is the denial of the existence of women musicians by todays music industry, particularly live music and festival promoters, a state of affairs Ashley is understandably furious about.

“We continuously get told that women are not present within the music industry” she says, citing Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis’ recent comments following Glastonbury’s failure (again…) to book any female headliners for this years festival, as an example of this. “Even her, who is like technically one of the most powerful and mainstream women in the industry, who has a lot of power over decisions that are made. Even she’s just like ‘There’s not enough of you, there’s not enough women at high levels to come and play at this festival’. Like, I get having Elton John, I get it - it’s his last tour - cool, I like Elton John, I’m happy for him playing Glastonbury. But why’ve you got to have two men either side of him?” If Eavis was unable to secure the one female headliner she approached, Ashley says, why didn’t she have backups she could ask who were also female? “That annoys me” she says, with classic understatement. 

Ashley Stein

“We’re constantly being told that us, as women, are not doing enough. We’re not picking up guitars, we’re not making bands, we’re not doing this, we’re not doing that… Where it’s completely frickin’ untrue because we’ve been doing it for a million years. We are here so why are we so invisible to these people? What’s stopping us from headlining Glastonbury? What’s stopping us from getting to Glastonbury at all? Or to get to other places or to be signed to record labels? Why are we seen to not be here when we clearly are?”

The problem, you suspect, is not with the women musicians: It’s with the event organisers, live music promoters, record labels and other arms and components of the music industry who wilfully fail to notice them and who display a jaw dropping lack of curiosity and initiative when it comes to actively looking for them.

The second panel of the day, Gender & Neurodivergence in the Music Industry is a topic that is very close to Gillian and Ashley’s hearts. Both are neurodivergent: Gillian has autism and ADHD, Ashley has dyslexia, ADHD and OCD. Through talking to each other, and to friends, they stumbled across something they felt was both un-discussed and very important:

“Most women in music that I’ve spoken to have claimed to have some kind of neurodivergance, whether it’s dyslexia, ADHD, OCD…” says Gillian, “We’re everywhere - and we don’t talk about it. And that’s mad to me because I wanna scream from the rooftops about how many of us are here, and how we work, and how we are supposed to be here.”

“We were just like ‘Oh my God, we have to do that’” says Ashley,  “it just suddenly seemed really important”

Although both she and Gillian were diagnosed as adults in 2019, she feels that lockdown may have played a part in a perceived increase in women (both musically inclined and otherwise) asking to be referred by GP’s for diagnoses*. “I think a lot of people - especially women - started to realise this is probably what they have got going on, and I think everybody that I know who hasn’t already got a diagnosis is on a waiting list to be diagnosed with neurodivergent stuff.”

Having had just over three years to sit with and come to terms with her diagnoses, Ashley now feels she wants to “Talk about it, I want to dig into it.” Also “I want other people to know that they can still achieve lots of stuff, they can still do immensely well in whatever they want to do.”

"I just thought I had to muddle along with this, I have to struggle with this because I have to deal with it, but… The more you talk about it, especially with people that have similar experiences, the more you realise you don’t have to struggle with it. Life doesn’t have to be as difficult.” - Gillian Morrison

There are established correlations between neurodivergance and the creative arts: Just google ‘Famous people with Autism’, ‘Famous people with ADHD’, ’Famous people with Dyspraxia’ or ‘Famous people with Dyslexia’ and you'll find a lot of musicians and actors.

“Our brains work in a specific way that means we’re really creative” says Ashley, “and that’s awesome, it’s a really awesome thing to be, to have going on. It doesn’t always feel like it because you have to work twice as hard to get by a lot of the time, and it can be really frustrating: I’ve certainly found it extremely difficult like even now, but… it’s something to be talked about and celebrated and especially among women and gender diverse people. A lot of us are like that - it’s cool - and we need to have some sort of way of discussing it with each other and I think it’s important, basically, yes.”

“It’s really important to have these conversations among creatives” says Gillian, “because I know that through working with Attitude Is Everything [Gillian is one of their Future Leaders] there’s a whole load of things that I didn’t know about my diagnoses. I’ve been diagnosed since 2019, like Ashley, so I’ve known for a while and I’ve come to grips with it for a while but there were certain things I didn’t even think of ’til I started working with them. Like asking for special requirements or like asking employers or lecturers to be slightly nicer to me with deadlines or use more concise language. And I just thought I had to muddle along with this, I have to struggle with this because I have to deal with it, but… The more you talk about it, especially with people that have similar experiences, the more you realise you don’t have to struggle with it. Life doesn’t have to be as difficult.”

Gillian Morrison

The Future Leaders Initiative is run through Attitude Is Everything’s Beyond The Music project explains Gillian “Where they try and improve a disabled representation in the music industry” she was allowed onto the project because of her neurodiversities and “They gave me a lot of support, and extra training, and a lot of like confidence and stuff that’s been really, really useful.” The programme is “coming to a close now and I’m really upset about it, but it was really, really good to understand my place in the industry as someone with a disability, and also how else to make the industry more accessible for other people. Because it’s one thing to climb up the ladder and it’s another thing to help people up the ladder as well I think.”

Both women say that they’ve enjoyed working together on the conference, despite working in wildly different ways because of their neurodiversities.

“You plan all this stuff and you’re really chaotic” says Ashley, “but when you look at someone else and they’re doing the same thing you’re just like ‘Oh my God, what are you doing?’ like ‘How do you live like that?!?’”

They both laugh.

“It’s been quite funny” concludes Ashley, “and eye-opening.”

I ask them if they’re nervous about the event now that it’s only a week away.

“I’m not” says Gillian, “because part of me always trusts Ashley blindly, that as long as she’s involved it’s gonna work out fine.”

The conference is the first event she’s ever put on as the impact of Covid meant that she was unable to put on events throughout the time she was completing her degree course. “So this is really scary; it was really ambitious to do a conference first!” she laughs.

Ashley makes music and Gilian would like to; this desire for creativity was part of the reason why she chose to take a music business course. The pandemic has meant that it’s “had to go on the back burner for a while” but she’s still keen to do it. She’s just picking her moment. “Ashley told me, when we were working together, about Girls Rock School, and I’m really, really keen to try that. So, not right now, but… maybe.”

Both of them would like to see their new conference continue, and grow, in future years.

“I really enjoyed this” says Gillian “so if I ever get the opportunity to run it again, either next year at some other point - especially if it’s with Ashley - I would absolutely love it. I know live events can be quite stressful but I think this has been the best case scenario, with Ashley. I would quite happily do this again for years and years and years if I get the chance.”

Ashley is firmly in agreement. “I’ve had a really, really good time. Cos I’ve usually done this kind of stuff by myself, and it’s very stressful and difficult. So it’s been really cool to actually work with someone else on it.”

When she did her own women and music post-pandemic conference last year “So many people were like ‘You should do this again, you should do this again’ and I was like ‘I don’t know how I’m gonna make that work, I don’t have a team, I don’t have anything…’ I was just a bit like ‘I don’t really wanna do it again’ because it was really hard on my own. But now “I’m just like ‘Oh, actually, could do this again’”

“It would be amazing to run this every year and to make it bigger, and do it in a bigger venue.” She admits “Or take it places as well. And I think it’d be really good for the both of us as well.” She and Gillian could use their experience to “Go on to talk to conferences. Up here we have Wide Days, which is a music conference, and there’s Resonate, which is in Scotland as well…Yeah, there’s loads of cool stuff that I think could come of it, for ourselves as music business people.”

Taking their experience as neurodivergent women “From our conference into other peoples and asking if we could come and speak at other events about that, and start bringing that into the mainstream view of everybody at these other kind of events, where they’re not talking about it. I think that would be really, really cool” she says. “I’d love to do it again. I think it could become an annual thing and it could become really really big.”

Do you see it going on a Ladyfest kind of trajectory?

This question inspires a very happy “YAAAASSSS!” from Gillian.

”Yes, that would be my vibe.” Echoes Ashley, “That’s always been something I’ve wanted to do. I’ve run so many gigs that have got all female lineups, all queer musicians, all that kind of stuff… so it would be really cool to bring the two things together and have like a proper, full on, big venue, different panels, different wee events kinda thing…”

As for future plans:

“I’m in the middle of setting up a business that will be a social enterprise that will run music business workshops and courses and stuff for women and gender minority musicians, in person, because I’ve done that before.” Eventually there will be a website as well “Kind of like LinkedIn Learning but for musicians, and much cooler.”

She wants to link all of this up to big events like the conference “Because that’s what I’ve always done. So I want to bring all of these things together and get a whole crazy Ladyfest vibe, for sure. Think that’ll be great.”

More immediately, Gillian has plans to volunteer at Glastonbury this summer “Which is really exciting cos I’ve never been to a festival before, so why not start with Glastonbury?”

“Yes” says Ashley, in mock stern tones “Why not?!?”

Having just emerged from a period of heavily structured time at university, Gillian is enjoying having free time to work through things and “Kind’ve do what takes my interest”

Women in Music: It’s Brutal Out Here takes place on April 6th at The Voodoo Rooms in the Speakeasy, Edinburgh. Doors open at 11:15am. Attendees are then welcome to eat their lunch and network before the conference begins at 12:15. The showcase will run from 7:30-10pm. Tickets are available here.

*Statistically, girls are far less likely to be diagnosed with ASD [Autistic Spectrum Disorder] or ADHD [Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder] than boys. Women are also much more likely to be diagnosed in adulthood for both conditions than men are.