Jazz Counts Study

What Would Jazz in the Academy Sound Like Without Patriarchy?

Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice Releases Jazz Counts, Groundbreaking Research on Women Teaching Jazz in Higher Education

Jazz Counts Study graphic highlighted gender disparity in jazz faculty at higher ed institutions

The Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice (JGJ) continues to work toward a more equitable future for everyone who plays jazz. But you can’t fix what you can’t measure.

For the first time, JGJ has sponsored a study—research that offers real numbers on who is teaching jazz in the academy today. Spoiler: It’s not a level playing field.

Overview

Jazz Counts: Measuring the Jazz Faculty Gender Gap in Higher Education, a landmark study by researcher Lara Pellegrinelli, is the first comprehensive effort to collect and analyze data on the gender makeup of jazz faculty at colleges, conservatories, and universities across the United States. Drawing from the websites of over 200 educational institutions, Jazz Counts reveals that male-identified educators outnumber their female-identified counterparts by a factor of six. Women are underrepresented across all faculty ranks, administrative roles, popular jazz instruments, and in academic areas that include music history, theory, and composition. In addition to presenting the data, the study identifies challenges women face in academia that contribute to systemic inequalities. It offers six actionable recommendations for administrators seeking to close the gender gap and foster a more inclusive environment.

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Report and Graphics Downloads

By the Numbers

Faculty Gender Overall: The study analyzed information from 3,014 educators to determine the representation of women-identified jazz faculty. Bar graph on the right depicts 15% female and 85% male as jazz department faculty. Bar graph on the left depicts 8% female and 92% male as instrumental jazz faculty.
Mapping Our Study: The information in our study represents 222 educational institutions across 44 states and the district of Columbia during the 2021-22 academic year. Image of the United Stated with blue dots over locations of schools in the study.
Faculty Instrument by Gender: Bar graph listing gender breakdown for 15 most common instruments. Piano/keyboard (15% female), Saxophone (7% female), Drums/Percussion (4% female), Guitar (4% female), Bass (4% female), Trumpet (2% female), Voice (76% female), Trombone (3% female), Vibraphone (13% female), Violin (52% female), Flute (63% female), Clarinet (22% female), Tuba (20% female), Harp (100% female), French horn (0% female)

 

Women as Instrumentalists and Singers: Among female-identified faculty members, almost half are vocalists. Pie chart with shades of blue showing women faculty as 49% vocalists, 17% piano/keyboard, 7% saxophone, 4%
Primary Academic Title by Gender: Bar graph per 1,000 faculty. Out of professor, associate professor, assistant professor, lecturer, instructor, no title has more than 10% female representation, except for Adjunct Faculty, which is less than 20% female.

Executive Summary

Jazz Counts: Measuring the Jazz Faculty Gender Gap in Higher Education gathered information from the websites of over 200 colleges, conservatories, and universities to offer the first quantitative data on women’s representation as faculty members teaching jazz. The study documents the numbers of female-identified jazz educators as compared with their male-identified counterparts, their job titles, and their primary teaching responsibilities.

Our study shows that men are an overwhelming majority of jazz faculty members, surpassing women’s representation by a factor of six. Women are outnumbered substantially on the most popular jazz instruments; in every faculty rank and as administrators; leading ensembles and teaching studio lessons; and teaching academic subjects, such as music history, music theory, and composition.

The statistics presented here offer jazz scholars a material foundation for ongoing conversations around gender justice while providing the academy at large a model for further studies in the emerging field of data-humanities. The research is also intended to help administrators understand how gender impacts the production and reproduction of knowledge in jazz education, a professional arena critical to halting women’s erasure and disrupting systemic inequalities. Generally speaking, the data suggest a need to address departmental hiring practices, the use of adjunct and part-time labor, and decision-making around course assignments in music departments. We also intend for this study to serve as a reference for high school educators and their students, who may benefit from taking faculty gender balance into consideration when they decide where to continue their jazz studies. 

This research was sponsored by the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. The research design and original dataset upon which the research is based was created by Lara Pellegrinelli in collaboration with students at The New School in New York City.

To join the next iteration of our study or correct information from the study, click below:

Jazz Counts New Participant Request Jazz Counts Correction Request

Methodology

There is no ready-made dataset for quantitative information on jazz and gender in the academy. Pellegrinelli and her students compiled the list of schools that forms the basis for Jazz Counts’ original dataset by referencing multiple years of DownBeat magazine’s annual jazz education guide, “Where to Study Jazz,” and cross-checking it with a list of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The websites of the educational institutions themselves served as the primary sources used in the data collection; if a school did not list faculty on its website, it could not be included in our study. 

We imposed no stylistic limitations on what kinds of jazz could be represented. To be counted in our dataset, educators were members of their school’s jazz faculty, specifically designated to teach within that performance specialization. Alternatively, they were included if they expressed an affiliation with jazz in their bio or personal website information through evidence of an active jazz performance career, educational background in jazz, research or scholarship on jazz topics, or teaching jazz curriculum. 

We prioritized each educator’s self-representation. To identify each jazz faculty member by gender, we examined the pronouns we encountered in these sources—and found only “he” and “she” in reference to the educators in our study. This is why we use the terminology “female-identified” and “male-identified” for our data, as opposed to sex assigned at birth or the descriptors “female-identifying” and “male-identifying,” which suggests a more active process of participant self-identification. We acknowledge the presence of a broader spectrum of identities than our project was able to capture, including cisgender women and men, transgender women and men, and those with non-binary, gender-expansive, and genderqueer identities. In an attempt to find respectful, inclusive language, Jazz Counts was guided by Berklee’s IRB guidelines and the American Psychological Association’s Bias-Free Language Guide (APA, 2020). 

Jazz Counts received feedback from Berklee’s Office of Institutional Research, Provost’s Office, and President’s Office. It was reviewed by two outside readers: Scott DeVeaux, professor, McIntire Department of Music, University of Virginia; and Kevin Fellez, associate professor of music and director, Center for Jazz Studies, Columbia University.

Journalist Lara Pellegrinelli. She has blond, shoulder length hair and white skin. She is smiling at the camera.

Lara Pellegrinelli is a researcher, writer, editor, and educator whose work has appeared in The New York Times and Village Voice and on NPR. She began contributing to NPR’s arts coverage in 2008 and led a data analysis of the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll published as "Equal at Last? Women in Jazz, by the Numbers." Pellegrinelli holds a PhD in Music from Harvard University. Her dissertation, "The Song is Who? Locating Singers on the Jazz Scene," is the first ethnographic study of jazz singing. She has taught at institutions that include Princeton University, NYU, Juilliard, New England Conservatory, the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins, and The New School in New York City.

Reach our study team at: jazzcounts@berklee.edu