Feminine Subjectivities

Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, this chapter shows how women artists navigate the gendered complexities of working in the highly male-dominated occupation of electronic music production and performance. Using a feminist critical management studies lens and positioning the construction of subjectivity as a relational, and power-laden process, the discussion notes six subjectivities enacted by women producing and performing electronic music. (1) The Intersectional Artist (2) The Genderless Artist (3) Visible Woman: Invisible Artist (4) Shrinking Violets and Tough Cookies (5) One of the Boys and (6) Bringers of Divine Feminine Energy. The discussion addresses the impacts these subject positions have on women’s careers and concludes by showing how women’s collectives, despite representing an additional burden on those who organise them, are challenging the status quo by providing public and visible action through the ‘safety and strength in numbers’ of collective activism.