When hundreds of students wandered over to the Lakefill earlier this month to watch Best Coast perform for A&O’s Spring Benefit concert, they witnessed a true rarity, a sight unlike almost any other that A&O has brought to campus: a woman on stage.
Since the class of 2011 stepped foot on this campus almost four years ago, Northwestern’s best-funded student group has hosted just a handful of women. The most prominent were Kristen Schaal, a Northwestern alumna who opened for Flight of the Conchords three years ago and Amy Millan, a member of the band Stars. Others were members of lesser-known groups including Cornmeal and Family Groove Company.
According to the list of comedians, bands and speakers I received from A&O covering the time since Fall Quarter 2007, not one other woman has come as either a headliner or even an opener for any primarily A&O-funded or organized event. Take a moment to think about what that means. A&O sponsors about eight performances a year. If you consider opening acts or the musical performances including bands with five or more members, the numbers start to sink in: Fewer than 5 percent of the people who have entertained you in any way on A&O’s dime in the past four years have lacked a Y chromosome.
Which leads to some big questions. What is going on here? How did this happen? And does it even matter?
Is A&O just sexist?
If only it were that simple. Given that most student groups are not actually full of misogynistic gremlins, I can nearly guarantee you that the hard-working leaders of A&O have never sat down at a meeting and said: “Who should we invite to campus this year? Remember: no chicks!” There are many reasons dozens of men have been entertaining a majority-female campus for nearly an entire presidential term, and most of them have little to do with A&O.
As a student group at a mid-size university, A&O cannot just bring whomever they want. To decide on any given performer, A&O comes up with a list of possible names that students would be interested in, then compiles a student poll to gauge interest and popularity. They use the poll as a reference, but working with a variety of agencies, they narrow the list down to performers who are actually touring colleges and might be available on dates that work. Of course, money is always an issue, and even if Lady Gaga offered to do cartwheels down the aisles of Cahn Auditorium, A&O could never afford her. When student interest, available dates and adequate funding come together, an A&O performance is born.
One thing they do not consider, however, is hitting demographic checkpoints. Although ethnic minorities frequently perform here (e.g. Tracy Morgan, Aziz Ansari and Ludacris), this was never exactly on purpose. The number one criterion, stressed over and over by Director of Speakers Drew Deitch and Director of Concerts Allison Zuzelo, is whether or not the person could sell out a show. “The only thing I care about is having the most tickets sell as possible,” says Deitch. “That’s what tells me I’m doing a good job serving the students well… Nothing else gets in the way of that goal.” A&O is so good at predicting this, in fact, that the last show not to sell out was Daniel Tosh’s stand-up act two years ago – and that still filled about 900 out of 1,000 seats. Despite the four-year womanless streak (the last female headlining comedian was Sarah Silverman in the spring of 2007), Deitch made it clear that if the choice came down between a male comedian who could reliably sell out a show and a female comedian who might fall a few tickets short, the choice would be an easy one. The man will come.
So where are the ladies?
Of course, A&O is not exactly choosing between hundreds of women and purposefully looking the other way. The truth is that their numbers, compared to what is available, could be worse.
If you count the year in which Sarah Silverman came, then A&O’s percentage for hiring female comedians is at about 10 percent over the last five years — basically on par with the percentage of women’s names on the touring rosters of available comedians sent to A&O by some of the top Hollywood agencies.
Comedy and music are two very different fields, and music especially varies tremendously by genre. In comedy, however, the lack of equality has been especially picked over by the media in recent years. Although Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are often cited as women who have revolutionized comedy, the field remains overwhelmingly male-dominated, especially in stand-up, late-night television and films. “Humor, as a specific area, tends to be culturally coded as a male domain and men dominate that field,” says Christine Wood, a Ph.D candidate in sociology who teaches classes on the sociology of pop culture. “So while women are making strides in it, they’re still not the key players running or producing the shows.”
Why this is could fill up an entire gender studies class, but it boils down to a variety of factors ranging from a “boys club” atmosphere that dissuades women from entering the profession to a belief among some that women just aren’t funny. The fact that the greatest debates over the recent movie Bridesmaids had nothing to do with casting or plot, but were about whether women could be gross on film, or whether men could find women funny, or whether seeing the movie is a social responsibility, shows just how far the industry has to go before it achieves parity.
Should A&O care about gender?
While I was researching this article, I told my most feminist friends, the ones who never conflate feminism with hating men, who read feminist blogs and take gender studies classes and donate to Planned Parenthood, a little bit about what I had discovered regarding A&O’s numbers, and every single person I mentioned it to was surprised. Even Maura Ross, co-president of College Feminists, said “it’s not something that I had even thought about.”
Even people who actively care about equality do not always notice when there is a lack of it, and ironically, it is partly because women have made so much progress. There are more women attending universities than men, and on average, they do better in school. “Sometimes people don’t see gender disparities unless they’re on the receiving end of them or they’ve thought about it and have had it pointed out to them,” explains Wood. “There’s a strong ethos on a college campus like this one of multiculturalism. That’s part of the reason maybe of why people don’t problematize the lack of women in culture… Some people don’t believe there are these structural inequalities because there are so many women in the numbers of the undergraduate population. They then don’t see these disparities within certain fields like comedy or music or pop culture representation.”
We live in an environment where sexism is not always discussed as fluently or as openly as other forms of discrimination, if it is acknowledged at all. Sometimes, we act as if gender imbalances are no longer a problem, even though we are more attentive — if not always more successful — in addressing ethnic or socioeconomic diversity. “People might react more vehemently or have a language to react to it,” says Wood. “People are politically aware of that. I won’t say people care more about racial integration than gender equality, but… that may be a response.”
But when I talked to Zuzelo about A&O’s failure to bring female musicians to campus, it was not framed in the same way. “The vast majority of acts are male groups or male-driven bands,” she explained. “Hip hop artists especially are male. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is.” It is easy to argue that A&O is not responsible for the gender discrimination inherent in the entertainment industry, or that fighting against such forces with a limited budget on just one college campus could only do so much. But diversity matters, and it is not good enough to say that you cannot change the way the world works. This is why, despite the fact that the frequently cited low minority enrollment at Northwestern is not exactly anybody’s “fault,” the administration has made a conscious effort in the past few years to raise the numbers. A truly educational environment requires a variety of voices, and those voices do not just appear out of nowhere.
Getting even the occasional female performer on campus matters because college campuses are a place for changing the way people think and see the world, and most know from experience that that learning takes place among peers and in social life at least as often as in the esoteric confines of a classroom. And if we care about “changing the world” (is it naive to believe anyone still does?), this is the place to start.
Not everyone agrees. “An institution like Northwestern’s goal is not to give female comedians a chance,” says Deitch. “They don’t have any obligation to give males or females a chance. A&O’s goal is… to give students the names they want to see the most.” This makes sense on the surface — given that each performance ultimately comes out of student funds, why should less popular entertainers come in lieu of bigger names?
Except A&O does claim to care about diversity — just not a whole lot. “One of our goals has been to get women and more racial diversity,” Deitch says. “But those goals would never supersede the goal of selling the most tickets… There are plenty of student groups on campus whose goals are to bring female speakers, or speakers from different cultures.” In short: It would be nice if it happened, but it’s not our problem. The cause belongs to others. But female speakers and female entertainers are not the same thing. College Feminists focus on issues like sexual assault and abortion rights, not bands and comedians. As the No. 1 group responsible for bringing entertainers to campus, A&O has an obligation to respect and foster diversity without assuming that a niche organization will just take care of it. To be fair, both Deitch and Ross expressed a willingness to work together to bring a female entertainer to campus, but if it doesn’t work out, the responsibility to do so does not disappear.
There are dozens of reasons A&O has not managed to bring more women to campus, but not one of them is that it would be impossible to do so. Other universities do this all the time, especially women’s colleges, who probably put more of a premium on hosting female entertainers. In the past few years, Smith has brought Feist and Janelle Monáe, Bryn Mawr got Dar Williams and Wellesley has hosted Matt & Kim and Kid Sister among others — all schools with fewer students (and women) than Northwestern has. In fact, it’s not exactly Northwestern that is failing: Mayfest, which is not associated with A&O, brings at least one woman to Dillo Day each year, including prominent solo acts like Regina Spektor and Estelle. As true as it is that A&O has to deal with limited dates and options and funding, as inconvenient as it might be to bring more women to campus, it is not impossible. But change is impossible without a concerted effort — and change is needed.
What could A&O do?
Because of how ASG allocates funding, selling tickets matters. Groups acquire funding depending on how popular their events are, so bringing a bunch of unheard of acts every quarter just to fill a quota would not make anybody happy. As Zuzelo explains, “It’s not within our best interest to ignore what people want. Our first concern is whether our shows will get people excited.”
But if it seems like I have nothing but criticism for A&O, allow me to try a compliment: As one of the largest, best-funded student groups on campus, A&O is a highly capable organization. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that using their very talented publicity team, they can help get people excited about shows that might not sound immediately popular.
“I think A&O overlooks the power of publicity on campus,” says Ross. “They bring people who require so little in the way of publicity to get students excited that they forget they could bring somebody who maybe a majority of the student body hasn’t heard of and publicize the heck out of it and just reach out to people that normally would have no interest or no idea who these people are.”
She should know. College Feminists regularly use provocative posters and other means to excite student interest in little-known speakers. Last year, hundreds of students came out to see Jessica Valenti, a feminist writer, after a strong publicity campaign sparked student interest.
This isn’t asking a lot. Sadly, I am not asking for equality — or anything close to it. I’m asking for something more than 5 percent. I’m asking for a concerted effort to address a shortcoming A&O did not plan for but that is nevertheless a shortcoming. And if it means taking a small risk on just one show a year and bringing a comedian or musician whose popularity falls somewhere between that of the kid on your floor whom no one claims to have met and Snoop Dogg… is that so much to ask? “I have complete faith in the inner workings of A&O, that with all that mindpower, they might have the power to make an event that might not be the most appealing to students on the surface into an event that students would pay $5 or $7 to see,” says Ross. I agree.
A&O could also expand the kinds of acts they are willing to invite. If hip-hop and DJing are exceptionally male-dominated fields, why not try a genre that isn’t? The same goes for comedy. Insisting on bringing stand-up comedians to campus and then shrugging over the lack of women available is unconvincing. One reason Deitch gave for not inviting Sarah Silverman back to campus even after her agent repeatedly suggested it was that she wanted to do a book tour, not a stand-up act. But when Hillel brought comedian Andy Samberg to campus in the spring of 2008, about 600 students came out to watch him do a casual Q&A about his career and personal life, not stand-up. And people laughed — a lot.
If some of the funniest women in the country are performing in sketch comedies or writing for television, does that mean they can’t ever entertain us? Stand-up is great and it is popular and A&O should continue to provide it. But to create artificial constraints and then say there is no way out of them just isn’t an excuse. As long as students continue to come out for other kinds of comedic performances, claiming that popular female comedians just can’t come to campus because they will not do stand-up somewhat misses the point.
Allow me to reiterate: It has never been A&O’s intention to prevent women from performing on campus. None of this was on purpose. But that does not mean that it isn’t A&O’s fault, at least a little bit. What it comes down to is largely a question of moral philosophy: Are we responsible for our intentions, or for the outcomes of our actions? Are we held accountable only for what we actually do, or for what we don’t do? A&O may not be a sexist organization per se, but by shirking responsibility, it is complicit in the marginalization of female entertainers. And so are we. Unless the student body demands something better, we are just as responsible as an organization whose main goal is to cater to student interests. We may not be able to fix the problem overnight, but acknowledging that it is an issue that will require more than just goodwill to overcome is at least a first step I can live with.