Australian Music Business Managers' Views of Working with and Supporting Birth Parents After Career Breaks

Abstract

Abstract The career planning and working conditions of music industry workers are largely shaped by the organisations, clients and cultures they work with and within. Music industry workers have been model “gig” workers, often employed under project-based contracts, or as freelancers and sole traders, making job security and hence financial security a key concern for workers in the sector. This is even more challenging for women and gender non-conforming people who have given birth. While the business interests of larger music labels have been accounted for in “portfolio” and “DIY” career development models, the views and interests of small-to-medium enterprises and microbusinesses are not as readily apparent. This paper contributes to redressing this absence through presenting findings of focus groups and interviews with music business managers from Victoria, Australia. While employers generally aim to support birth parents, they view motherhood as necessarily conflicting with music careers and frame the music industries as unfriendly to women. This results in a situation where employers can externalise both the risk of and solutions for the disruptions and the disadvantages having a child creates for women, where women are ultimately seen as responsible for enacting individualised forms of change to advance their careers, and the provision of services to facilitate this is seen as the responsibility of government or music-focused organisations. While such attitudes are indicative of ostensive support for changes to better support returning workers, they also act to legitimise the systemic forms of inequality that face returning workers.