Chicks with Picks: An Ethnography of Female Rock Instrumentalists in Tampa, FL

Adele Fournet

Date of Award

2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Miles, Stephen

Keywords

Gender, Popular Music, Women in Rock Music, Bourdieu, Pierre, Female Rock Instrumentalists

Area of Concentration

Music

Abstract

This ethnography of female rock instrumentalists playing in bands in the Tampa, FL area explores the social significance of why there are so few female instrumentalists in this scene�five percent of the total number of rock musicians. Drawing on the ethnographic strategies of interview and participant observation and the theoretical insight of Pierre Bourdieu, this research more specifically seeks answers to the following questions: First, why are there so few women playing instruments in bands in this area? Second, how do some women get involved in this scene as instrumentalists despite the statistical odds against them? Finally, what are the effects of this minority status on the lives and careers of the women who do manage to enter into rock as instrumentalists? In order to answer these questions, I argue that it is important to conceive of the local level rock music scene as a distinct field of cultural production with unique forms of cultural capital. I demonstrate that women's access or lack of access to this cultural capital, along with the habitus that would incline them to see rock music as an attractive field to pursue, is a crucial factor in understanding the significance of women's minority status in rock music in Tampa, FL.

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