Unmuted: The Transformational Leadership of Women in the Canadian Music Industry
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This project explores the ways in which women enact leadership across diverse sectors of the Canadian music industry, challenging traditional, hierarchical conceptions of musical authority. Drawing on case studies of four prominent figures—Tania Miller (classical conductor), Chelsea McBride (jazz composer and bandleader), Tanya Tagaq (Inuk throat singer and performance artist), and REZZ (electronic music producer and DJ)—this study investigates how leadership is embodied, communicated, and contextualized through genre, identity, and cultural practice. Using the orchestral conductor as a template for embodied leadership, five key aspects are identified as common to each subject: charisma/presence, communication, relationships, mentorship, and musical vision. The research is informed by interdisciplinary literature in the areas of education, media, gender, and leadership studies, offering a framework through which to understand both the systemic barriers and the enabling conditions that shape women’s paths to leadership in music. Special attention is given to how musical vision expands or reshapes genre expectations, and how cultural context influences both leadership style and public reception. While each case presents a unique trajectory, collectively they demonstrate how women are actively redefining leadership not only through their positions of influence but also through their commitment to collaboration, inclusion, and innovation. This study contributes to the growing body of feminist and critical leadership scholarship by proposing a new model of musical leadership that integrates mentorship, career creativity, knowledge and understanding, and communication and relationships as essential, interconnected elements. Ultimately, it affirms that women are not simply participating in musical leadership but are reshaping its very meaning.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.033 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".