After participating in a course on gender equality, Jessy McCabe noticed that there was not one woman among the 63 composers featured in Edexcel's A-level music syllabus.
Female Composers
The seventeen-year-old student has launched an online campaign after receiving a discouraging response from the head of music at Edexcel, who wrote that female composers "were not prominent in the western classical tradition (or others for that matter)."
On her change.org petition page, McCabe challenged this assertion, referencing the female composers featured in BBC Radio 3's International Women's Day programming. "Surely, if BBC Radio 3 can play music composed by women for a whole day, Edexcel could select at least one to be part of the syllabus alongside the likes of Holborne, Haydn and Howlin' Wolf?" she wrote. McCabe argues that female contributions to music need to be valued, so that girls will have role models to inspire them.
More than 700 people have signed the petition to date. One among them is music professional Adam Ferguson, who wrote: "Exam boards who hide behind the excuse that there's little historical precedent are lazy, unenlightened and should be ashamed to call themselves exam boards at all."