SPOTLIGHT ON… Dr Nancy Cooper, founder-director of the AGO’s Task Force for Gender Equity

Nancy, what inspired you to start the AGO Task Force?

Years ago the American Guild of Organists (AGO) surveyed its membership on various topics, including the ratio of men to women members based on age. I was dismayed to read the youngest membership ratio was 70% men to 30% women. The AGO had never discussed this so, together with Eileen Hunt, then AGO Vice-President, I formed the Task Force (TF). At an AGO gathering in California in 2020 we brainstormed with a few other women ….and then COVID struck. We embraced Zoom meetings and have moved ever onward.

What is the AGO – how does it work?

The American Guild of Organists is made up of local chapters, with regional oversight, and national conventions that take place regularly in cities. across the US. An elected National Council has oversight over all goings-on, including conventions, and professional certification, which is similar to the RCO's diplomas.

Has the work of the TF developed as you hoped and expected?

The TF was initially about increasing gender awareness for the entirety of the membership. A BIG triumph for us was the rapid increase of articles by women in the AGO national journal, exploding from roughly 1 to 25 in a year. We also launched a composition competition for women. We had over 30 applicants, and the quality of all the applicants was so high; it was a wonderful experience, start to finish. Now we’re preparing for our Second Annual competition and already have prize funding completely covered. Truth is, people asked us if they could donate. It was so heartening.

Challenges? Progress is slow. People still write and say “I’d love to play music by women but I can’t find any.” Lord, have mercy!

What do you see as the TF’s future?

AGO’s National Council voted this summer to change us from a task force to a permanent national committee, which is great news. So our future looks amazingly great, especially given the current climate in America. Becoming a national committee has elevated our ability to jump into all kinds of areas and raise our concerns, a few of which are: more inclusive repertoire in the AGO certification process; more inclusive performers in national and regional events; and working with event-planners so that they are more equitable, from programming to workshop topics, etc.

Tell us about your own musical background.

I have a master’s degree and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, as well as a Performer’s Certificate and Artist’s Diploma from Eastman. I have worked in Episcopal churches exclusively and continuously since getting my doctorate and have been an adjunct music professor at the University of Montana for over thirty years. In America, this next comment would go without saying, but I’ll spell it out for those who might not know: I am a thirty-year adjunct because I am a woman. My male colleagues leaving Eastman at the same time I did, are now all in tenured positions. There is some improvement in academia, but not as much as there should be, and there is very little gender equity in the tenured organ positions in America.

Has it become easier for American women to succeed in organ-related careers?

There is no question that for many years women organists in the US have often felt isolated and unsupported. The main work that the Task Force is doing here is to bring women together, through Zoom at the least, or in the same room when possible, and provide emotional support, which in my opinion is at least as important as professional support. At the heart of it all: we no longer feel alone. When we hear each other and share with each other….wow. Great things happen!

But, while I see young women organists succeeding, I see many women at the end of their careers who still have multiple part-time jobs (church and adjunct teaching) because they could never get a full-time job. The Episcopal Church, USA, for example, has very inequitable hiring practices, with 90% (or more) of cathedral positions held by men, and a high percentage of the “very part-time” positions held by women. And there are fewer and fewer women in graduate programs, although all of this is anecdotal because there is no national organization that gathers those statistics.

AGO increasingly tries to improve gender equity and recently began to recommend that convention committees strive for 50% men, 50% women in everything from workshops through personnel to repertoire. As an example of what these changes might accomplish: a past convention committee had their proposals rejected by the National Council not once but twice for lack of gender equity – and when they were rejected the second time, and National Council questioned their inability to conform to the recommendations, they responded that no one wanted to hear women play and that’s why they were using such a high percentage of men.

Do US churches often make special provisions for organists who are mothers of small children?

Some do, some don’t. For the first year of my daughter’s life, my church “allowed” me to leave (during the sermon!) and pump breast milk for her. And I hired a caregiver at church during the week to look after her, so that I could feed her on site. I think it’s all individually determined, there’s certainly no national policy of any kind – but I will add that for years, the most successful women organists in America were unmarried, or childless, or both. So it was a moot point. This is getting better, but not like it should.

We at SWO have greatly valued our close relationship with you all in the TF. We are different organisations but with so much to share.

I haven’t yet addressed our wonderful, close relationship with all of you in SWO. Somehow, during those first months of COVID, we found each other, we shared a few Zoom meetings, and it has been a joyful collaboration ever since. Meeting some of you in person at the AGO national convention in Seattle, as COVID was finally receding, was a true gift. We do have different purposes, as the Task Force has an activist element, campaigning for gender equity within a pre-existing organization…. and sometimes I wish we Americans could just become a branch of SWO. You could take over the world! SWO – America! SWO-Canada! SWO – Australia! Could you imagine the excitement of an international SWO convention?! But I digress. I like to think that the Task Force succeeded in part because of our collaborative relationship with all of you, and I like to think that we have helped you as well, in some small way. May we live long, and prosper, together!

Nancy, it continues to be a joy getting to know you and your work; we at SWO look forward to ever-increasing collaboration, with all the benefits that continues to bring!