Let’s hear it for the girls

A new documentary, Sisters with Transistors, tells the story of the often forgotten female pioneers of electronic music. Narrated by Laurie Anderson, the film gives a wonderful insight into the role women have played in the development of these technologies - and how they are still unequally represented in the music world.

Suzanne Ciani revolutionised the sound of US commercials, inventing an electronic bubbling sound for a bottle of Coke, and became the first woman to score a Hollywood film: Joel Schumacher’s 1981 comedy The Incredible Shrinking Woman. “I didn’t know it would be 14 years until another woman was hired,” she says. “We are casualties of a day-to-day system that operates without awareness that we’re even there.”

This year the number of female composers in film has gone down from 6% to 4%. It took until 2020 for a woman to win the Oscar for the best original score when Icelandic musician, Hildur Gudnadottír won for her work for the Joker.

Another contributor, artist Laurie Spiegel, says technology is a tremendous liberator. “It can blow up power structures.” As more women gain the confidence to use technology to create, the more we will see their influence shining in the future.

Now’s the time to get your children started on that fantastic journey - where their skills and knowledge enable them to achieve their dreams and breakdown barriers of gender that might hold them back. Learning to code at our exciting Future Super Skills camp might just be the first step on that journey.