Why are female composers historically overshadowed by their male counterparts? Using data on over 17,000 composers who represent the entire history of Western classical music, we analyze the gender gap in representation and prominence. We examine how differences in opportunities to acquire human capital—shaped by norms and beliefs about gender roles and the place of women in society—affected this gap, focusing on access to training through parents, teachers, and conservatories.
Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Fréderic Chopin are towering figures in classical music history, but what about their female counterparts? Why are names like Francesca Caccini, Elizabeth Lutyens, and Fanny Hensel so much less familiar? In a study recently published in the European Economic Review, we tackle this question, providing the first systematic empirical analysis of the historical gender gap among classical composers.
Drawing on data from over 17,000 composers spanning the second century to the present day, we explore why women have been historically underrepresented and less prominent among classical composers. We use data from composers’ biographical entries in Grove Music Online (henceforth, Grove), one of the most widely used encyclopedias of music, Scott Pfitzinger’s Composer Genealogies, and information on the location of conservatories from the International Directory of Music and Music Education Institutions. Our findings reveal how systemic barriers and unequal access to training limited women’s contributions to the musical canon.
Two sides of the gender gap
The gender gap manifests in two interconnected ways: representation and prominence. The data reveal that women make up a mere six percent of the composers in Grove Music Online. This fraction has grown over time but remains far below parity, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Gender gap in representation
Prominence reflects how celebrated and influential composers are within the classical music tradition. We measure prominence using the word count of composers’ biographical entries in Grove. These entries, written by expert musicologists, focus on a composer’s life, works, and contributions, making their length a reasonable proxy for how posterity judges their importance. On average, female composers’ entries are 25 percent shorter than those of their male counterparts, accounting for era and geography. Figure 2 shows how this gap in prominence has evolved. The gap was widest in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries and has narrowed slightly in the last century.
Figure 2: Gender gap in prominence
Exploring the Causes of the Gap
Why does this gap persist? We argue that disparities in human capital acquisition lie at the root of the issue. Composing music requires substantial investment in education, training, and mentorship to develop the necessary skills. Historically, these resources were often less accessible to women due to societal norms and institutional barriers. As John Stuart Mill observed in The Subjection of Women: “Women are taught music, but not for the purpose of composing, only for executing it: and accordingly, it is only as composers, that men… are superior to women.” This lack of training systematically disadvantaged women, making it far more difficult for them to achieve prominence.
We examine three main pathways that shaped composers’ careers: families, teachers, and conservatories.
Families played a crucial role in nurturing musical talent, and parents were instrumental in shaping composers’ trajectories. Female composers were three times more likely than their male counterparts to have musician-mothers, suggesting that maternal support was vital for women breaking into composition. However, the prominence benefits of having musician-parents were equally shared by male and female composers, offering no advantage to women in closing the gender gap.
Teachers also played a central role in developing composers’ skills. While female composers were not disadvantaged in terms of the quantity or quality of their teachers, the benefits of mentorship were smaller for women. For female composers, the advantages of having more or more prominent teachers were partially or fully offset. This disparity likely reflects historical biases, as teachers were less willing to invest in female students, given their limited opportunities in composition and the undervaluation of women’s music by audiences, critics, and patrons.
Conservatories transformed musical education in the nineteenth century, creating opportunities for formalized training. We measure their impact by examining how proximity to conservatories—both geographically and temporally—affected composers’ prominence and the gender gap. Early conservatories often excluded women from composition classes, but female composers still benefited when professors offered private lessons outside formal curricula. Over time, conservatories modestly narrowed the gender gap in prominence by improving access to training but paradoxically widened the gap in representation, as the share of female composers declined relative to men.
Downstream consequences
The gender gap also had downstream consequences, particularly regarding female composers as teachers and their use of pseudonyms.
As teachers, women were not disadvantaged. Female composers taught as many students as their male counterparts, and these students performed just as well in terms of their prominence. This suggests that female teachers were just as effective as male teachers in developing their students’ skills.
In terms of pseudonyms, however, significant differences emerge. Female composers were far more likely to adopt pseudonyms, with many choosing opposite-gender names. This reflects the societal bias against women as composers, often forcing them to obscure their identities to ensure their work was judged on its merits.
Conclusion
Our findings reveal how differences in access to training, shaped by societal norms and beliefs about gender roles, contributed to the underrepresentation and lower prominence of female composers. While progress has been made, historical disadvantages faced by women highlight the challenges of achieving prominence in a field where they were often not taken seriously. Recognizing these dynamics sheds light on the forces that shaped the musical canon and constrained the potential of many talented composers.
About the article:
Borowiecki, Karol J., Martin H. Kristensen, and Marc T. Law (2025). “Where are the female composers? Human capital and gender inequality in music history.” European Economic Review 171 (January). 104893. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104893
About the authors:
Karol J. Borowiecki is a Professor of Economics at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark.
Martin H. Kristensen is a PhD student at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark.
Marc T. Law is a Professor of Economics at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont, USA.
About the images:
Fanny Hensel (1805-1847), Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Amy Beach (1867-1944), George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
