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omen choral conductors are an
1
integral part of the musical community, but despite society’s current emphasis on
W uplifting marginalized voices, the number of women conductors in the United States
continues to decline. The purpose of this article is to illuminate the existing challenges of the
2
gender equity gap and consider solutions. As of 2024, fewer than 10% of orchestral conductors
3
around the world were women. In the United States, twenty-five professional choral ensembles
have budgets exceeding $1,000,000, and of those, 80% are conducted by males (Table 1 on
4
the next page). In her 2019 dissertation, “‘You Just Gotta Be Great’: Narratives of Experience
from Two Women Conducting in the Lutheran Collegiate Choral Context,” Elisabeth Rogers
Cherland found that in college music programs in the United States, women comprised just

32% of faculty (Table 2 on the next page). This disparity is vast, especially considering 48%
5
of doctoral music graduates in the United States are female-identifying. The percentage of
6
collegiate women conductors of all ensembles is only 8% higher than in 1976 (Table 2); and
7
according to the College Music Society, the number of women conductors of all ensembles at
the collegiate level dropped by 7.05% between 2006 and 2020. 8

CHORAL JOURNAL May 2025 Volume 65 Number 8 33