by Ray Hayes
Protect & Gamble recently began a new initiative to bridge the gender wage gap within the music industry. The initiative, entitled Hear Her Music was created in efforts to rid the music/entertainment industry of prejudice against women in ads and television. P&G hopes to empower the next generation of singers, songwriters and musicians by ensuring equal compensation versus male counterparts while allowing them to increase avenues to, “…license or compose their music for their production.”
Free the Bid is the first phrase of the Hear Her Music initiative which advocates on behalf of women directors bidding on commercial jobs in the advertising industry. During the month of September 2018, Free the Bid celebrated its second anniversary with over 100 global agencies committing to utilize the initiative’s database to find and hire qualified female directors. As of now, the database includes profiles for women directors as well as female editors, colorists, and DOPs.
In addition to the Free the Bid campaign, P&G will be partnering with the Women in Music initiative to create even more opportunities for “female artists and songwriters to monetize their existing original music through leading synchronization licensing platforms. Publishers, labels, artists, and other copyright owners using these tools will be able to enable female-centric filters in order to easily catalog the millions of songs they represent to be readily available for licensing to productions participating in the Hear Her Music initiative,” as reported by the Broadwayworld.com.
Moira McCarthy, Board Director of Women in Music and Senior Director at Position Music, recently spoke about the company’s initiatives and its focus on ending the gender wage gap in the entertainment and music industry. “This initiative empowers creatives with a practical solution to close the gender gap in their everyday work. P&G’s new initiative Hear Her Music embodies corporate responsibility in the effort for gender equality.”
