Australian Women Composers Jump from 2% to 15% in a Decade

A decade ago, women composers were nearly invisible in Australian classical music, accounting for barely 2% of airtime on the nation's leading classical station.

Today, that same network plays music by nearly 1,300 female and gender diverse composers. Their share of airtime has jumped to 15.7%, with audiences now requesting their favorite pieces by women during annual festivals.

The transformation started in 2015 when ABC Classic discovered the startling 2.2% figure and launched a deliberate campaign to change it. What began as a small project in 2016 grew into the Festival of Female Composers, now possibly the world's largest radio festival of its kind.

The momentum extends far beyond one radio station. The Australian Music Centre reports a 30% increase in orchestras requesting sheet music by female composers over the past five years. State orchestras across the country now program more music by women than works by Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach combined.

Musicians are driving change from the ground up too. Flautist Eliza Shephard started "March of the Women" after realizing she could count on one hand the number of pieces by women she'd learned in decades of study. Her project now releases a recording by female composers every day in March and has commissioned six new works from Australian women.

Sound engineer Virginia Read, who recorded hundreds of albums played daily on ABC Classic, witnessed the shift firsthand. She remembers when performing works by living Australian women was considered a token gesture, often underprepared and poorly received. Now composers like Elena Kats-Chernin rank among the station's most-played artists overall, with her Eliza Aria even featured in international bank commercials.

The Ripple Effect

The numbers tell a story of genuine momentum. APRA AMCOS, Australia's music rights organization, sees close to 5% year-over-year growth in women and gender diverse creators joining. Hannah Lee Tungate's Tenth Muse Initiative tracks orchestra programming nationwide and found 2025 marked the first year women composers received more performance time than the traditional "big three" of classical music.

The change required intentionality at every level, from radio programmers to orchestra directors to individual musicians. But the data shows that when the industry makes space for voices that were always there, audiences respond enthusiastically.

Australia's classical music world still has work to do, but the past decade proves transformation is possible when people commit to it.