Equal pay lawsuit at the Boston Symphony

[Brian]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/entertainment/music/orchestra-gender-pay-gap/
Article is part-paywalled so I will add a shortened version below.

BOSTON — On a winter day 14 years ago, the Boston Symphony Orchestra announced that it had finally found a new principal flutist. The search had not been easy. Two hundred fifty-one players had applied, 59 were called to Symphony Hall to audition, and when it was over, only one remained.

Elizabeth Rowe, just 29, had landed in one of the country's "big five" orchestras. And as a principal, she occupied a special seat, the classical musical equivalent of cracking the Yankees' starting rotation.

"If I could have a dream job, this was it," Rowe says.

To win the slot, Rowe had taken part in the BSO's blind auditions, playing her flute onstage behind a brown, 33-foot polyester screen. That way, the orchestra's 12-member selection committee couldn't see her and it wouldn't matter whether she were a man or a woman, black or white. But after Rowe had the job, something important changed. That's when she believes being a woman hurt her in one key way.

In July, Rowe, 44, filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the BSO seeking $200,000 in back pay. Her lawsuit came after years of appealing privately to management about the $64,451 less a year she is paid than John Ferrillo, 63, the orchestra's principal oboist. Rowe contends that she should make an equal salary and that her gender is the reason she doesn't.

The BSO, in a statement, defended its pay structure, saying that the flute and oboe are not comparable, in part because the oboe is more difficult to play and there is a larger pool of flutists. Gender, the statement says, "is not one of the factors in the compensation process at the Boston Symphony Orchestra."

This week, Rowe will enter mediation with the BSO aimed at resolving the conflict before it goes to court.

Ferrillo doesn't just sit next to Rowe in the woodwind section. They're musically joined at the hip, whether dancing across Debussy or the second movement of Beethoven's Sixth. They're also friends and mutual admirers.

They both know what it takes to earn a prominent spot in such a competitive field. Both attended music school, paid their own way to travel to auditions while in their 20s and dealt with rejection. It took Ferrillo 10 years and 22 tries to earn his first symphony position, as second oboe in the San Francisco Symphony in 1985.

But by the time the BSO approached Ferrillo to fill its oboe vacancy, he was a prized member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In 2001, to lure him away, the BSO paid him twice what the orchestra's rank-and-file make. The BSO and Ferrillo have a nondisclosure agreement in place, which prohibits disclosure of his salary. But the figure, now $314,600, became public as part of the BSO's tax filing. (Nonprofit organizations are required to list the top five compensated employees earning more than $100,000.)

Coming into the BSO in 2004, Rowe had done her homework. She asked to be paid the same salary Ferrillo had negotiated. The orchestra turned her down. Rowe says management also would not make her "overscale" — the term for what all principals routinely receive over their base pay — a percentage of her base, which would allow her to avoid asking for a raise every year. Instead, the BSO offered her $750 a week over base the first year, $950 the second and $1,100 once she earned tenure.

Rowe accepted the offer but did not forget. Over the next 14 years, she says, she regularly asked to be paid the same as her male colleague.

It is the orchestra's argument — in a response filed with the court — that "the flute and the oboe are not comparable." In the statement to The Washington Post, the BSO also said the oboe is "second only to the concertmaster (first chair violin) in its leadership role" and is "responsible for tuning the orchestra." The limited pool of great oboists, the BSO said, "gives oboists more leverage when negotiating compensation."

Although four other principal BSO players — all men — earn more than Rowe, the orchestra notes that she is paid more than nine other principals, of which only one, harpist Jessica Zhou, is a woman. Rowe has been given occasional raises, and her current salary is $250,149 a year.

Rowe's case speaks to a larger reality. There is an undeniable gender gap in the classical-music world. A Post analysis of tax records and orchestra rosters shows that although women make up nearly 40 percent of the country's top orchestras, when it comes to the principal, or titled, slots, 240 of 305 — or 79 percent — are men. The gap is even greater in the "big five" — the orchestras in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia and New York. Women occupy just 12 of 73 principal positions in those orchestras.

Orchestra managers interviewed by The Post stressed that they do not like that there is a pay gap and concede that women are underrepresented in titled positions. But they said the issue is not bias but the slow turnover in a field with no mandatory retirement age. In Boston, for example, principal cellist Jules Eskin was in his post for 52 years, from 1964 until his death in 2016. His successor, Blaise Déjardin, is just 34. If he remains as long as Eskin, there will be just one audition for a single principal slot in more than 100 years.

[Brian]

Obviously there is a lot to discuss in this story, but the BSO's argument that flute players should be paid $60,000 less than oboe players because oboe is more important seems to be very ominous indeed for violists. I wonder if they're paid at all.

[shirime]

I hope it won't be as humiliating as it was for Abbie Conant.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

Thanks for the note about Conant. I'd never heard of her but just made a quick survey of information available on the internet. Had no idea what a lowlife Celibadache was.