The Possibilities of/for Feminist Music Criticism in Music Education

The essay sets the context and identifies some possibilities this music educator/feminist theorist currently finds in music, whilst applying the framework of sociologist Dorothy Smith's standpoint feminism to music as constituted within the ideology of particular institutions and practices. Contributions of feminist musicology, in terms of documentation of women's experience in and with music, women's status, and perspectives of feminist music criticism, are summarized. Considering these contributions and framework as a basis to this contextualized critical stance leads to further questions. For example, just as feminist musicology provides music education with the possibilities of new content, is it not likely that feminist criticism in music education could assist musicology in coming to terms with making musical sense, collectively, through cultural institutions? In beginning to work with such a question of criticism, it is suggested that institutional issues of power, as played out through who teaches and sexual harassment of student, are evident and require attention.