Sizing Up: Helen Marcou on how far BIGSOUND has come on gender parity

Helen Marcou is a renowned music community activist and a vital figure in the Melbourne music scene. As a co-founder of SLAM, she’s been instrumental (sorry) in keeping the city’s live music culture vibrant, late, local and loud, setting an example for similar battles in cities around the country. She also runs Bakehouse Studios with partner Quincy McLean. In March she was inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll For Women for her services to activism and the music industry.

Marcou is moderating theEvery Space Should Be A Safe Spacepanel at BIGSOUND next week – but is also looking forward to the informal conversations that will happen throughout the week between panels and showcases, where the real work gets done. At a time when the push for better representation and inclusive within the industry is crystallising, she got on the phone with TMN for a chat about progress made – and what’s still to be done.

How many BIGSOUNDs have you been to? When was the first?

I think this will be my third BIGSOUND. Third or fourth, possibly fourth. The first one I went to I got flown up just for a closed meeting, and that would’ve been around 2011, I think.

Do you remember looking at the speaker line up that year and going, “Oh, could be more women on there?”

That’s the first thing I looked at. And for a couple of years I remember being really aware of the imbalance on the panel, and actually wrote to a few people about it and made a complaint, in the early days. Then I think when Nick O’Byrne took over he wrote back to me personally and made a conscious effort to change the bias on the line ups, and then the last time I went up was two years ago and I was on a LISTEN-curated panel, and from what I understand they’re doing at least five panels this year and that’s just part of their diversity agenda, but I haven’t had a good look at it this [year].

At our last count it’s 68 women, 117 men and at least one speaker who’s gender non-conforming or non-binary – what do you think of that ratio?

I will say that it’s vastly improved from the early days, but I think there’s still work to be done in this area, and I would say there is absolutely no lack of experts to draw on, to invite to BIGSOUND, to speak on all the issues that they’ve outlined on those panels. And particularly for when some of the CEOs of some organisations are being invited to represent their organisation, here’s an opportunity for them to also step aside.

You can’t put all the onus on the programmers of BIGSOUND, because some panels and announcements call for CEOs. This is an opportunity for the CEOs to step aside and make room for other people in their organisation to speak up where it’s more appropriate and probably have just as much expert knowledge… here’s an opportunity, and if we’re really, really, really convinced and want to be part of the solution, I’d put it up to some of these industry CEOs and leaders to step aside when given an offer to speak at BIGSOUND.

I was at a conference recently where the panel moderator actually got up there and said, “This is an all male panel and I apologise for that and we’re aware that that’s not great.” It feels like we have reached a turning point where people at least notice that.

This is where men can use their agency to make change. Don’t leave it to the organisers. Step aside yourself, question the diversity make-up of the panel before you put your name or your face to it, and use that change at the organising stage, not afterwards, to make an apology that there aren’t any women on the panel.

But does it feel like we’ve reached a turning point where, for the most part, people are really aware of that and are making an effort?

For the most part, yes. There’s still a lot of work to be done, however, for the most part, we’re starting to challenge the notion of unaware bias and it’s really important that the men in the industry know that they are the ones that are roadblocking, and when you ask them, most are completely unaware, and they’ll say, “No, not me.” But they do it in a day-to-day situation.

There’s a woman, Jade Lillie, who was at the Footscray Arts Centre. Recently she’s one of the people that received a Myer Fellowship, and so when I did a little bit of investigation into her – ’cause I just sat on that panel for the fellowships, and it’s a big panel, it’s a huge amount of money, they gave away $1.6 million to artists and thought leaders – and the resounding thing I heard about Jade is that she gets so much power from stepping aside and giving voice to Indigenous community leaders and other women and people of colour, that she actually enriches her own position, and the amount of respect for this woman across the board, it’s palpable.

And I thought, well, this is something our male leaders need to be doing as well, and take a lesson out of that book.

Step aside. Give other people a voice, and you’re more powerful in your actions rather than out there hearing the sound of your own voice every single time. We can name check a bunch of male CEOs that are the heads of peak bodies, industry organisations, that are the constant spokespeople, where there are other people in their organisation – people of colour, women, gender diverse people – that could easily convey the same message.

Do you think we’re in danger of getting too focused on women, and particularly white women, and ignoring other opportunities to increase representation of people from low-income backgrounds, people with disability, Indigenous people and so on?

It is a problem, and we, again, myself, I often make a point where I can [of stepping] aside when I feel that there isn’t proper representation of people of colour and other marginalised people, particularly Aboriginal [people], and First Nations people should always come first. And as a middle class white heterosexual 50-year-old woman, although it’s taken me a long time to be in this position, to have the ear of government, be asked to speak at conferences, etcetera, I also make a point where I step aside when I can.

I recently got asked to join a committee and felt that there was an absolute over-representation of white women over 50, and my advice was to reach out and always see who’s not at the table before you put yourself forward.

That’s one of the things that theYour Choiceinitiative is doing well. It’s piggybacking off the conversation that’s dominating, which is women and harassment and that sort of focus, but that’s a conversation where white women, and particularly young white women, tend to get the most attention. But they’re using that to bring in other parts of the broader conversation about how music can be a safer space for everyone.

I think the interesting thing with Your Choice, because it’s such a broad industry initiative – I think they’ve kept their language really broad and the focus is back on the behaviour, and I haven’t really seen many other campaigns that do that, actually focus on everyone’s behaviour, and ultimately it is pointed at those who instigate, whether it’s gendered violence or antisocial behaviour. And it’s often men. We can’t deny that the men are the main perpetrators of this. And why do we keep telling girls to be careful, don’t get assaulted, don’t get raped? It comes straight down to [telling] the boys: no means no. Don’t rape, don’t assault, don’t get too drunk, don’t indulge in antisocial behaviour.

That’s the starting point, and I think that’s a really important part of their awareness campaign is looking at individual responsibility, instead of reactionary initiatives where we’re all so resigned to this [happening] and then we look at ways that we can help victims and survivors, which is so much part of the solution anyway; I’m not discounting that, but we have to look at prevention and messaging and education at the beginning as well. It starts from primary school. It starts from learning respect.

[In Melbourne] we had our first ever gendered violence, our family violence first ever policy that came out last year, and Fiona Richardson was the Minister for Prevention of Violence and also our Minister for Women – did you see her Australian Story that went up recently?

No, I didn’t.

Oh, I just cried all the way through it. Anyway, here we have a survivor who has been through traumatic family violence, and she led this campaign. She died last week, and I feel it’s so important that we continue her work. But there were five key points that were sent out recently from the Office of Gendered Violence. The underlying principle is that we need equality in society to stop gendered violence.

So these are some of the key points that have been sent out. “We need you to create positive change and support freedom from violence by challenging sexist and discriminatory jokes, rigid gender stereotypes and roles wherever you see them. Promoting women’s independence in decision-making in public life, in particular aboriginal women and children and women with a disability. Challenging rigid gender stereotypes and roles to ensure that visible leadership and inclusion of women, older women, people from diverse cultural backgrounds and LGBT communities and institutions. It’s strengthening positive, equal and respectful relationships…” and [they] just go on. “Helping educate others in awareness in regard to discrimination, inequality…”

But these are really amazing key underlying principles that we can all live with.

But do you think someone who really needs to hear that message – and with a panel like the Safe Spaces one at BIGSOUND as well – are those people going to hear it in the right way? Is this going to be a self-selecting thing where only people who are already open to the idea and on board are going to come along?

What I’ve seen in Melbourne, which has been really interesting, and also that last BIGSOUND panel, there were a number of bookers and venue owners that came because they wanted to, and really they want to make change as much as anyone. People often underestimate the venue owners and think that often it’s all about bums on seats and just getting people through the door, but there are a lot of good citizens there that also feel a moral responsibility, and need the tools themselves to be able to deal with sexual assault or harassment or antisocial behaviour in their venues.

They also want to mitigate from liability. So it creates an opportunity where they’re not going to have incidents that might be out of their control somewhere down the line, and so these are the people I would really like to see [at the panel]: festival bookers, venue owners, others who are interested in creating a safe space. Ultimately we want to give some takeaways that they can go and use immediately within their own businesses, or their own festivals, or in the language that they deal with with their staff and security staff, et cetera… We’re giving them the tools to be able to create safer environments, and from that we have more inclusion as well. That’s what we’re looking for. With cultural change comes more inclusion where people feel they can be a part of their music community, they can express their music and their art in venues and at festivals.

There are role models that work in production, and in every aspect of them, and in security and places like that, two areas that really find difficulty finding women or gender diverse people to work in those roles. And they’re growth areas, they’re absolutely growth areas as well, ’cause everyone wants to work with women and gender diverse people in those roles.

This interview has been edited and condensed.