100 signatures reached
To: Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music
Take Her Name - International Women's Day
Encourage male artists signed to their respective record labels to change their name across their Social Media platforms on International Women's Day to a female version of their name, in support of female musicians & songwriters in the industry.
Why is this important?
With almost 90% of the rock n roll hall of fame being made up of male musicians we need to move on from pigeon holing female musicians by image and understand that good musicianship and songwriting is all that counts.
08 March 2017 is International Women’s Day, where this year women are being asked to ‘be bold for change’. But let's go one extra, and encourage men to 'change to be bold'.
PRS for Music report that their membership of over 95,000 songwriters and composers is only 13 per cent female. And reportedly, there have been cases of female writers pitching songs under a male pseudonym to give themselves a better chance - the sort of thing 19th Century female authors had to do.
Laura Mvula recently declared that we are living in the "Donald Trump time of music" while Lady Gaga has spoken about how she ‘really wanted to be taken seriously as a musician for my intelligence more than my body’ during the early part of her career, while accepting Billboard's Woman of the Year award in 2014. Lady Gaga also called the industry a "boy's club" and said women faced pressure to "sell everything to be a star.
There has long been discussions from music industry experts and celebrities’ alike calling for women to be recognised in all aspects of the industry. Female performers should be recognised for their musicianship rather than the fulfilment of a stereotype of ‘girls girl, wronged woman or unattainable sex-bot which is claimed to be empowering’ as Charlotte Church put it in her lecture on sexism in the music industry.
And on Thursday 23 February 2017, in support of this campaign we will be staging an event to challenge attitudes towards female musicians at London’s 93 Feet East (Brick Lane). The all female line up will comprise of five London based musicians, and celebrated DJ, Jenn Crothers, to play songs late into the night.
The event is Free & Doors open from 7pm.
And we will be using #takehername throughout the campaign!
