Women in the music industry
“Diversity is a real problem in our industry. Having been in the industry now for 20-odd years, I regret to say that I think it’s no better than when I entered it. If anything, I might go as far as to say that I think it might even be a bit worse.”
Diversity in the music industry
“My view of it is that there is a lot of tribalism in the industry, and that leads to a sort of silo mentality. So the blokes tend to stay together and the black staff members stay together. And that’s fine. But it doesn’t actually address the problem, which is how to get everybody to work together and therefore benefit by association. We all do bring very different skills. Women think differently to men, and so on.”
Building self-confidence
“The way we’re going to crack this is not by enforcing positive prejudice. That will never, never work, and it’s an insult to people’s intellect. I think what we need to do is to build self-confidence. That seems to be such a simple statement, but it isn’t an easy thing to acquire. When you’re in a bloke’s business and you’re a woman, you tend to be that bit less self-confident. Women in this industry fundamentally lack confidence.”
Getting women into the music industry
“I have decided to take this on now, so we’re having a women’s meeting here. There’s going to some blokes coming along – some of my board directors. Because I asked them: do you have senior women in your companies? I mean, don’t you think that it’s a bit odd that you don’t? To balance it better would create a much more fertile environment for people to feed and breed off of each others’ ideas and different inputs.”
