…and she always knows her place is a project promoting female and female identifying driven narratives, exploring what it is to be a woman in contemporary life.
Chloe Turner is a Melbourne based Musician and Music Industry professional. Chloe is also a part of Listen, a feminist record label and collective who advocate for equality in the music industry. When we caught up we chatted about women in the music industry, and how everyday biases formed from traditional gender roles effect women in the workplace.
A: What kind of things are important to you in your life right now?
C: That’s a tricky question. Well my partner is important to me, and my friends, and my work in the music industry. I'm very career driven at the moment.
A: Why is your work important to you? Is it a passion of yours?
C: Yeah, I work really hard to do things in music. I love music and helping musicians with the skills that I have in admin and writing and being organised. I'm a musician myself but also I do lots of admin, run the label and stuff.
A: When did you discover that not only you love playing music, but also you have skills to help other musicians?
C: I was learning musical instruments when I was in high school and primary school, and went to uni and did a Music Industry Degree. That was when I was 18-19-20, and probably in the last year of uni I decided that admin was probably better for me than actually playing. So I started focusing more on that. Now I'm a musician and do all the admin and help run the label with people.
The label that I run is a feminist record label, and I am a member of a feminist collective called Listen. I do a lot of gender equality stuff, it’s a very white male dominated industry.
Like, festival bills and lots of local line-ups, the bands that are breaking overseas, they're all male dominated. And the constant divide between Pop and Rock music, and then 'Multicultural' music. It seems that if you are an artist of colour your music is defined by genre and not the actual music that you play. For example, Folk-Rock artists of colour may still be defined as World because they may be Indigenous, not just Folk. So at Listen we try and have discussions about this kind of stuff. But Listen is a tiny baby organisation.
A: So what’s the most frustrating part of being a woman in the music industry and trying to break through?
C: People tend to assume that you're an Assistant, or a Social Media person, and not listen to you or bother to introduce themselves. You may have a lot of responsibility within your job, as a band manager or a project manager, or whatever you’re doing, and people always assume you’re just there to help the men who have the important ‘decision making’ roles. I’d say that’s the most frustrating. It’s like you always have to prove you can do your job.
A: That’s so typical actually of so many ‘female’ jobs.
C: Women always fall into the marketing and publicity side of things too. And it’s always under paid. Or if it is paid correctly, its always questioned. Like, ‘do I really need to pay someone that much to do publicity?’ You do the work and nobody will hear about it, see how much publicity is worth to you then.
In office environments in the past, I’ve always fallen into, or it’s been assumed that I will do the office cleaning, cleaning the dishes, ordering supplies etc. when it’s never been specifically my job to do these things.
A: That’s crazy, but so true. I read that women in offices do so many extra unpaid admin jobs, like cleaning dishes, bringing food in for meetings. All that kind of shit is just expected.
C: Yeah, or it’s like I’ll cook my lunch and while I'm cleaning up my dishes I’ll quickly wipe down all the benches with some spray and wipe, or clean out the fridge just because I'm in the kitchen. Whereas I don't think anyone else would do that. They'd just be like ‘oh there’s coffee stains on the bench,’ or they wouldn't even notice it. They’d be like ‘ok, done.’
A: It comes back to everyday biases that people have.
C: Yeah all that extra unpaid domestic labour. I was reading this really interesting article about unpaid emotional labour that goes with domestic labour for women in the household, and women in the workplace. Men are like, ‘yeah I’ll help, just ask me and I’ll help.’ But the act of asking is still emotional labour. Like, I can ask someone to do the dishes, because I did them last time. But that’s still taking effort for me to take notice that they need doing and go ask someone, and then they probably won’t get done. I might end up having to do them anyway.
A: It’s like you become almost like…
C: The Mum
A: The Mum! Yeah. You have to ask people to do their chores around the office.
C: Which is so much extra work and potential confrontation.
A: Yeah, you don't want to create more tension at work and become that…
C: Naggy. Even though ‘nagging’ is just the patriarchy.
A: Yeah, so true.
So for female musicians, is it the same kind of thing? Unconscious bias where like you almost have to bring it to people’s attention? Like, ‘You have no women on your line-up.’
C: Well, I feel in that sense it is. When we’ve called out festivals, or called out people like, ‘have you looked at your line-up? There’s no women at all. How did you not notice that?’ But then it’s also women, just like being assumed that they aren't in the band or the musician. That they're the girlfriend.
That happens surprisingly a lot. That happened to me at a venue last year. We were playing a gig there and we were really early so we were loading in our gear, and we were just sitting there waiting for the sound person to arrive. Then the sound person just came up to my partner and introduced themselves and walked away, and it was like, ‘I’m in the band too and I’m sitting right here. Right next to my bandmate who you just shook hands with.’
A: I feel like those things are so obvious to women, but maybe not to men?
C: My partner’s pretty good. They’re non-binary trans, so they are going through a whole bunch of stuff themselves. But they are like, ‘okay that was fucked, that guy didn't even acknowledge your existence.’
A: Yeah. I don’t know if you watch Master of None?
C: Yes!
A: That episode they did in the first season,
C: With the Ad and the walking home thing?
A: Yeah. And they go out to a party and the director shakes all the guys hands and the walks away.
C: They have the fight.
A: Yeah, the fact that he’s like ‘I'm sure he didn't mean it,’ but the women are like ‘no.’
C: ‘This happens to us everyday and you’re already defending the dude in this situation, without even listening to us.’ I love that episode. And even at the start when they’re like walking home and it’s like ‘do do do do do,’ and for the girl its like ‘da-dadum!’ Can’t walk through the park, might not make it out of the park.
A: They (Master of None) have a great way of talking about different experiences. Whether it be race or gender or whatever, in way that’s so everyday, and so approachable. They don't have to sensationalise it for people to get it.
C: They just work it in, its so good.
A: So do you think women are valued in our society?
C: Um, yes. But they are under appreciated. I think that’s a good summery. I haven't really encountered like, absolute misogynists. I know they're out there. But I'm definitely in a bubble, a north side arts bubble.
But yeah, I definitely think we’re valued. I think it’s just lots of under appreciation and having no idea about the work and extra things that women do.
