Interrogating the Myth that Sexism no Longer Exists in the Music Education Academy

Myths have existed throughout history as a means to impose and maintain structures of dominance (Boyce-Tillman, Hendricks and Boyce-Tillman (eds), Queering freedom: Music, identity, and spirituality, Peter Lang, 2018). Over the past few millennia, western societies have adhered to what (Boyce-Tillman, Hendricks and Boyce-Tillman (eds), Queering freedom: Music, identity, and spirituality, Peter Lang, 2018) called the “one-sex myth,” or a presumption that women exist to serve men. Modest gains in terms of representation of female-identifying persons in the workplace, as well as legal protections against sexual inequities and abuses (Spiggle, T. (2019, March 13). Eight laws that helped women make history in the workforce. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomspiggle/2019/03/13/8-laws-that-helped-women-make-history-in-the-workforce/?sh  = 714ddf2d17b5), have perpetuated the idea that we now live in a society where sexism is no longer as prevalent. This chapter contains excerpts from five ethnodramatic narratives that each reflect a theme that we identified across our individual experiences as revealed through a collaborative autoethnographic inquiry (Chang, H., Ngunjiri, F. W., & Hernandez, K-A, C. (2016). Collaborative autoethnography. Routledge.). Each theme is interpreted through relevant feminist theory to challenge the myth that women have achieved equality with men. We used the practice of composite narrative (Leavy, Hesse-Biber and Leavy (eds), Handbook of emergent methods, Guilford Press, 2008; Willis, Qualitative Research 19:471–480, 2019)—or the crafting of a narrative that reflects common experiences but with aggregated details—to protect anyone from being identified. Each composite narrative portrays how female-identifying academics live the tensions and contradictions within the myth that the academy is no longer sexist.