La division sexuelle du travail chez les musiciens français

Data from a survey of French musicians conducted for the Ministry of Culture are used to analyze the processes producing inequality between men and women in music. Two models of a sexual division of labor coexist along with a differentiation depending on the style (learned vs. popular music). These two models closely link together working conditions, careers and the organization of home life for male and female musicians; and they underlie the construction of musicians', identities. In the world of popular music, bodily stereotypes of femininity (youth, seduction) and masculinity (the aestheticization of deviance, the bohemian life) dominate. In the world of learned music, a hierarchical model of masculine authority prevails with the figure of the conductor at the summit.