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Historical Definitions of Motherhood and the Implications on Women Conductors

Amber Kavie

Music 310: Women in Music

April 30, 2018

Throughout history, women have been continuously bombarded with societal

expectations regarding many aspects of their lives. One aspect concerns women being told that

their ultimate purpose lies in the ability to have and raise a family. Due to this, women have

been, and still are, encouraged to stay within the private sphere and to avoid demanding careers

in order to become a mother and fulfill the traditional model of motherhood. However, despite

this pressure, some women have ignored these restrictions and have gone on to have successful

and fulfilling careers while managing to maintain relationships and families, even in fields

dominated by men. In orchestral conducting careers, women face barriers in a male-centric field

that are ingrained into the profession by historic definitions of motherhood and societal

expectations of women. These factors are a major contributor towards the imbalance between

men and women on the podium and in order to overcome these barriers, society must redefine

what motherhood looks like.

For hundreds of years, the perception of motherhood in western culture has remained

centered around the expectation of a woman to bear children, create a home, and perform

domestic duties. Even though “women were encouraged to cultivate domestic music making,”1

duties revolving around the home came first. Public performances were strongly discouraged as

it would distract a woman from her responsibilities, and as a result, opportunities for women to

perform, publish works, or conduct were not provided. As a result, the exclusion of women from

creative fields only became more prominent. This perception of motherhood is best explained by

Lindal Buchanan in her book, Rhetorics of Motherhood. She states:

1
Sheree Cartwright, “Decisions, Choices, and Trade-Offs: Women’s Paid Work and Care Arrangements
After Childbirth,” in Theorising and Representing Maternal Realities, ed. Marie Porter and Julie Kelso (United
Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 123.
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The Mother, I maintain, operates as a god term within public discourse and connotes a
myriad of positive associations, including children, love, protection, home, nourishment,
altruism, morality, religion, self-sacrifice, strength, the reproductive body, the private
sphere, and the nation. Meanwhile, its corresponding devil term, Woman, invokes
negative attributes, such as childlessness, self-centeredness, work, materialism, hysteria,
irrationality, the sensual/sexual body, and the public sphere. Woman is the antithesis of
Mother— the dark to its light, the failure to its success— and a necessary internal
scapegoat. (8)

This duality is the exact concept that society perpetuates by manipulating it to promote the image

of the good mother and tarnishing the image of the working woman. If a woman chooses to

pursue a route that embodies Woman characteristics and avoid the Mother characteristics, then

they are immediately seen as selfish or cold. It seems that if a woman wants to pursue a career,

then there is something wrong with her. She is not prioritizing her ultimate purpose: having and

raising a family. This rhetoric only reinforces the exclusion of women from creative careers. In

fact, “artistic careers are still sometimes seen as somewhat self-indulgent, and even irresponsible.

Thus the creative mother may face the extra responsibility of justifying her need for self-

expression, something that may not have ‘clear benefit to her family or indeed to society.’”2

However, these expectations do not apply to men in similar fields. For example, Bach

had twenty children, yet society did not expect him to take care of them. He held demanding

posts and was writing multiple pieces of music a week. This double standard is supported by the

fact “that it was considered acceptable for a great male artist to be selfish and to sacrifice his

children to his art, but women have not been afforded that privilege.”3 Since women were

2
Jillian Graham, “Composing Biographies of Four Australian Women: Feminism, Motherhood and Music”
(PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2009), 118.
3
Graham, “Composing Biographies,” 119.
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continuously forced into the private sphere and expected to fulfill all the demands of raising a

family, without help at times, their opportunities have been drastically reduced, and as a result,

there are incredible disparities between men and women in creative fields.

Ethel Leginska, one of the first women to break into orchestral conducting, faced

challenges not only on the podium, but in her private life as well. She entered a field that holds,

and still holds, a very masculine identity. She embraced this and believed that to be successful in

this field, one had to embody male characteristics. For Ethel, this meant dressing in masculine

clothing and cutting her hair into a short bob. She also possessed leadership and self-promotion

skills that were traditionally associated with men and not deemed proper for a woman in her

time.4 However, Leginska faced challenges off of the podium that were unknown to male

conductors before her. She was married in 1907 to Roy Emmerson Whittern and had one child

with him, Cedric, in 1908.5 They eventually got a divorce, and they endured a nasty custody

battle over their son. During this battle, Ethel offered to completely give up her conducting

career to teach piano instead.6 Despite this, and for additional reasons, she still lost her child to

her ex-husband’s parents. Her identity as a mother was taken away. She no longer had to try to

manage the work-life balance, so she dedicated herself to conducting and performing. Despite

the loss of both her husband and child, Ethel still managed to preserve her career and speak out

to empower women to “rebel! Break loose from tradition and go our own way! We will never be

original, do great work, until we get some courage and daring, and trust our own way instead of

4
Julie C. Dunbar, Women, Music, Culture: An Introduction, 2nd Edition (New York: Routledge, 2016),
269.
5
Melodie Love Griffin, “Ethel Leginska: Pianist, Feminist, Conductor Extraordinaire, and Composer,”
Newport news, Christopher Newport University, 1993, 8-9.
6
Griffin, “Ethel Leginska,” 10.
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the eternal beaten paths on which we are always asked to poke along.”7 Ethel Leginska was

clearly a trailblazer for women in the field of conducting, but she faced incredible barriers. She

may have even lost custody of her child was due to her career because the field of conducting at

her time did not allow for motherhood.

In the cases of prominent female conductors, Antonia Brico, Ethel Leginska, Nadia

Boulanger, and Margaret Hillis, they were either never married or were married and divorced,

and none of them had the responsibilities of motherhood. In fact, Ethel Leginska was the only

one who was ever married or had a child at all. This could be due to the pressure to fully commit

oneself to their career or towards their family. On the Mother and Woman spectrum, the traits

needed to excel at a career, for example, work, the public sphere, and elements of self-

centeredness, are placed closer to the Woman end. Interestingly, these same traits do not face a

negative connotation when associated with men. Perhaps because these women were dedicating

their lives to their career, they felt that they could not or did not want to balance the realities of

motherhood with their livelihood.

Not only are female conductors of this generation breaking down more barriers and

achieving successes never attained by women before, these women are actively working to find a

livable balance between motherhood and conducting. That being said, there are still numerous

challenges that female conductors face when making the decision to have a family. One such

challenge is the physical reality of bearing a child. Julie Kelso states in her book, Theorizing and

Representing Maternal Realities, “As the pregnant body has traditionally been seen as the

epitome of womanhood, it has been perceived as highly disruptive by the conducting profession.

7
Griffin, “Ethel Leginska,” 13.
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It cannot be moulded into a masculine-like image on the public podium and so needs to be

tempered and controlled as much as possible.”8 In other fields, the physical act of carrying a

child would provide adequate reason to slow down and reduce stress. In orchestral conducting,

there is no such liberty. Even though women have continued conducting while pregnant, for

example, Nicolette Fraillon who conducted through her eighth month of pregnancy,9 the realities

of pregnancy are not addressed in the orchestral field. Women are expected to “silently and

stoically push their bodies to their physical limits”10 in order to pursue a male-dominated career.

Simone Young, an Australian conductor with two children said honestly, “There would have

been nothing I would have liked better while I was pregnant than just to stop. But, I knew if I did

that not only would the criticism be, ‘Oh, she hasn’t got any stamina.’ There would be criticism

of what happens when you are a woman – grossly unfair.”11 This pressure, both physical and

mental, may be a factor when female conductors are deciding whether or not to have children.

Male conductors do not have to face this hurdle. Since men cannot carry pregnancies, at least in

the human species, they are not faced with the physical difficulties that come with pregnancy.

Therefore, they may be perceived as more capable or reliable than a woman when being

considered in the hiring process.

Furthermore, there is the concept of the double-shift that comes with motherhood. The

working mother has her full-time career during the day, and when she leaves work she arrives at

another full-time job. This is a reality for all working mothers, and as female conductors put it,

“motherhood compels them to draw on their entire being – their bodies, hearts, and minds – and

8
Cartwright, “Decisions, Choices, and Trade-Offs,” 125.
9
Ibid, 125.
10
Ibid, 126.
11
Ibid, 125.
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balancing this commitment with a career that is also very physically and emotionally demanding

is not easy.”12 Even with supporting partners, mothers cannot have it all. Something must get

sacrificed. Most of the time, this comes at the cost of the woman’s own health. Simone Young

stated, “I am constantly sleep deprived and have been for the last three years.”13 In fact,

Simone’s sleep deprivation and sacrifice “means flying between two countries in one day – so

that she can attend her child’s sports day like any other ‘normal mother’ would.”14 This sacrifice

means more than just the cost of conductor’s health. In fact, “The difficulty in this balancing act

is that because women’s mothering responsibilities are seen as outside the concerns of the

podium it becomes an individual’s problem, not one of structural inequality.”15 This could be due

to the idea that a woman chooses to become a mother, therefore, it is her responsibility to

provide the majority of childcare. However, this perspective completely avoids the issue. A

woman should be able to both choose to have a child and pursue a fulfilling career. Proper

support systems need to be in place for mothers in high-power careers, but more importantly,

society must change its perception of working mothers. If society redefines what the “good

mother”16 is, then the possibilities for what women could accomplish in conducting, and all

fields for that matter, are endless.

Female orchestral conductors who work in a male-centric field face many challenges in

their careers due to the historical definition of motherhood and societal expectations of mothers.

This paper cannot begin to list all of the additional issues that come with the combination of

orchestral conducting and having a family as a female conductor. These conductors have to bear

12
Cartwright, “Decisions, Choices, and Trade-Offs,” 126.
13
Ibid, 126.
14
Ibid, 126.
15
Ibid, 126-127.
16
Graham, “Composing Biographies,” 102.
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the pressure of performing continuously at a high level while pregnant, somehow manage to

provide emotional and physical care to their children, and face all of the additional barriers that

impede women from getting hired in the first place. Clearly, the ancient definitions of mother

versus woman are still prevalent in today’s society, and the concept of motherhood may very

well be a reason that the field of conducting is still saturated with men. Since being a mother and

carrying a child cannot be made masculine, the definition of what a conductor looks like and is

must change to fit the twenty-first century. The reality is that more women are breaking into this

field, and the same image of a stoic man standing in front of an orchestra is no longer the only

option. Becoming a mother could make a female conductor more qualified to interpret the music

in ways that men cannot and may provide a new perspective in this field. However, without the

support of male conductors, board members, and orchestra members, women conductors who

decide to have children will continue to make incredible sacrifices to their own health and well-

being in order to fulfill the needs of the job and children she loves.
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Bibliography

Buchanan, Lindal. Rhetorics of Motherhood. Southern Illinois University Press, 2013.

Cartwright, Sheree. “Decisions, Choices, and Trade-Offs: Women’s Paid Work and Care

Arrangements After Childbirth.” In Theorising and Representing Maternal Realities,

edited by Marie Porter and Julie Kelso. United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars

Publishing.

Dunbar, Julie C., Women, Culture, Culture: An Introduction, 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge,

2016.

Graham, Jillian. “Composing Biographies of Four Australian Women: Feminism, Motherhood

and Music.” PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2009.

Griffin, Melodie Love. “Ethel Leginska: Pianist, Feminist, Conductor Extraordinaire, and

Composer.” Newport news, Christopher Newport University, 1993.