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Women must ‘sue senior managers’ to tackle music industry harassment culture

MPs were told that banning non-disclosure agreements ‘would be a game-changer for the music sector’.

Jonathan Knott
5 min read

Endemic sexism in the music industry will not change unless women take legal action against senior managers who discriminate against and sexually harass them, the head of a major sector organisation has said.

Giving evidence to a committee of MPs, the chief executive of the Independent Society of Musicians (ISM) Deborah Annetts said: “You need to sue companies and you need to sue senior managers to shift culture”.

Annetts made the comments to the Women and Equalities Select Committee during an evidence session following up on a recent inquiry, which last January reported that misogyny in the sector was “endemic”.

Other attendees included Jen Smith, the chief executive of the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority (CIISA), a new watchdog that is currently consulting on its standards.

Annetts said: “[It] does sound tremendously aggressive, but I don’t think the culture of this sector is going to shift just with CIISA. I think we need a better statutory framework, and then we need to have some test cases.”

Given that 90% of the ISM’s 11,000 members were self-employed, Annetts said that legislation being proposed by the government on employment rights “is going to fall short” of tackling discrimination and harassment.

She said that changes planned by the government “need to go further” because freelancers currently “fall outside the scope” of equalities legislation and the Employment Rights Bill.

Overall, Annetts said she does not think the situation on misogyny is “getting any better”, pointing to an ISM report in 2022 which found that discrimination in the music sector was increasing.

The body’s survey found two thirds of people working the music sector had experienced work-based discrimination – more than half of which would be classed as sexual harassment.

Lack of freelancer rights

“Informal work settings” were a factor exacerbating sexist behaviour, Annetts argued.

Of the 660 responses to the organisation’s survey, most were women. Annetts said they reported that discrimination and sexual harassment happened “everywhere… in sessions, in churches, in schools, on stage. You name it – every single location, they had been sexually harassed”.

She said the prevalence of this was “more weighted towards freelancers”, because they “do not have the rights that employed workers do”.

77% of people overall did not officially report the victimisation they experienced – including 88% of self-employed people and 59% of those who were employed.

In explanation, Annetts said: “You will not report if you think you are not going to get another gig.” She said that while women who come to the ISM for support with sex discrimination are “theoretically protected” against victimisation by law, they “still end up not getting more work because they’ve reported”.

She said there was a risk that people who took concerns to CIISA could find it was detrimental to their careers, “and that’s why we need a rigorous statutory framework”.

‘Desperately in need of help’

At the same session, CIISA chief Jen Smith said that “significant support” for CIISA within the music sector “needs to be translated into sustainable financial commitment”.

She said the need for CIISA was evident from the individuals coming to it “desperately in need of help and support”, but also smaller employers who were looking for independent guidance as they “grapple with these difficult issues”.

Other speakers provided further evidence of continuing misogyny in the sector. The singer and songwriter Celeste Waite said that all women experienced an “ingrained… unconscious sexist bias” in their regular interactions, but there was a “scale” in the extent to which their own status allowed them to “take a bit more of the power share”.

Waite said that “professional environments that are also social environments” and “have grey areas… are allowing certain people to take advantage over people that they can see are potentially more vulnerable”.

Dr Charisse Beaumont, chief executive of the charity Black Lives in Music, said that a lot of abuse tends to happen in studios and live settings such as gigs, concerts and festivals.

The perpetrator is often “somebody who is quite close, i.e. a manager or a promoter… and there is not really anywhere for people to go or call out,” she added.

She added that the pathway for bringing perpetrators to justice was “not clearly defined”.

Annetts and others giving evidence supported banning the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in circumstances involving harassment and abuse.

The ISM head said that at the moment “there is very little for a perpetrator to fear”, meaning people are “continuing with their inappropriate behaviours again and again and again”.

“If we get rid of NDAs, I think that that type of behaviour will be much more difficult to continue… this would be a game-changer for the music sector”.

Opportunity for impact

The committee’s report a year ago called on the government to change the law to extend protections relating to discrimination and harassment to include all freelancers. 

Other recommendations include enforcing a duty on employers to protect workers from sexual harassment by third parties, such as audience members or staff they have not directly employed. 

Annetts noted that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport had previously rejected “every single recommendation” in the report. But she said the change of government since then was “an opportunity to restate those recommendations”.

Given various legislative changes under consideration, she added that there is “such an opportunity for this committee to make a real impact in relation to changing the way that culture and safety operates… within the music sector”.