‘What does gender have to do with music?’, is in this article a question explored in order to 1) give an overview of important themes and areas in feminist interdisciplinary research on music and gender from the past decades, and to 2) theoretically advance what is specific about music’s relation to gender, and discuss how music and gender research can be furthered today.To achieve these two aims, the author describes and discusses different approaches to investigating the relation between music and gender; cultural critique of music itself, consumption/production research, studies of genre and social settings as well as studies of media technology.The author, with her portrayal of the field as a back-drop, wants to revitalize a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of music and gender research.Arguing that this is an interdisciplinary field with its own theoretical contribution that can be furthered by advancing the discussions of music’s particularity and music research’s relation to intersectional gender theory. © 2019, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. All rights reserved.

This position paper is written by four key researchers from two projects (one in Norway and one in Sweden) aiming to define and discuss terms and concepts in Gender Studies. It is inspired by the concept of dialogue as a method of academic writing and discusses the methods, results, challenges, and choices made in the two projects. While they both aimed to create and discuss a vocabulary for Gender Studies and gender research, the projects took shape from different approaches, and produced different results. In this position paper, we want to discuss the meaning of doing conceptual work and deciding on definitions of terms. Our aim is not to determine which approach is “better”, but rather to understand how the field of Gender Studies and gender research is being built.

In the past decades a large number of students have taken courses and degrees in Gender Studies around Europe and proceeded to find employment. This article is based on a quantitative and qualitative study carried out in 2012 of Gender Studies students in Sweden, their education and employment. The design of the study was inspired by a large European research project investigating Women’s Studies in Europe and concerned with the motives for doing Gender Studies among Swedish students, as well as who the students were, how they evaluated their Gender Studies education and what work they proceeded to after they left the university. In this article the results are discussed in terms of dilemmas: between Gender Studies’ critique of neoliberalism,employability and the former students’ wishes to be employed, and their evaluation of their studies and employment. The Swedish study is also compared with previous research in order to understand general and particular traits in Swedish Gender Studies education and employment. Analysis points to interesting contradictions within Gender Studies in relation to the labor market, student groups and employability.

With the internet and digital media technology increasingly central to practices around music, this shift is often seen as contributing to a networked music use characterized by individualism. Drawing on a focus group study with young adults in Stockholm and Moscow, this article argues, however, that digital music use today is shaped by discourses of difference, with gender a significant factor both in constructions of the ideal music and technology user, and in terms of musical influence and guidance. Taking into account contemporary research on new media technology, as well as feminist studies of technology and music, the article questions ideas of a neutral user of new music technologies, showing how the gendering of music and media technology can be seen as simultaneously context-bound and cutting across geographies.