Tenth Muse Initiative has released its analysis of the diversity of 2025 Australian orchestral seasons. Looking at the representation of both female and male composers and living and historical composers over the year, soprano and producer Hannah Lee Tungate is “cautiously optimistic” about this year’s findings, shared on the womenscomposersproject Instagram.
“One of the biggest takeaways from the 2025 data is that progress is continuing, but it’s uneven across the orchestras. Overall, works by women made up 14.6 percent of programming in 2025, an increase on 2024’s 11.9 percent after a dip from 13.2 percent in 2023,” Tungate tells Limelight.
“While this is encouraging, it still highlights how far there is to go before programming represents any sort of gender parity.”
For the first year since beginning the project, Tungate has found that in 2025, works by female composers were performed more often than works by Beethoven, Mozart and Bach altogether (12.5 percent) – which, for her, shows “both the progress being made and how entrenched the traditional canon still is”.
Tungate picks the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra as one of the year’s standout organisation. In the off year of its biennial She Speaks festival, its season still saw 22.3 percent of its works were written by female composers, living and historical. Living male composers were its smallest represented demographic at 5.6 percent.
“That said, a significant portion of those works were concentrated in two concerts (Light / Song) which focused specifically on women composers, highlighting an ongoing question about integration versus dedicated programming,” Tungate explains.
The Australian Chamber Orchestra commissioned five women in 2024, and increased it to 16 works by women in 2025 – 23.9 percent of its 2025 program were female-composed works, compared to 12.35 percent last year. Tungate’s picked it as a notable shift – “it will be interesting to see whether that reflects a longer-term programming shift or a one-year change.” Last year, 35.8 percent of the ACO’s program was written by living composers.
The Canberra Symphony Orchestra, a consistent standout in Tungate’s stats, had also its boosted female representation in 2025 from 22 percent to 29.7 percent: close to half of its repertoire (43 percent) is penned by contemporary composers, with music by living women making up more than a quarter (27 percent) of its season – more works by living composers than any other orchestra.
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is a close second, with 39.7 percent of its works performed by living composers (20.6 percent male, 19.1 per cent women. Its 2025 season was 21.4 percent female-composed.
“What we’re also seeing is a growing divide between orchestras,” Tungate says. “CSO, ASO and MSO have been consistently well ahead of the others when it comes to programming works by women. CSO in particular has been consistent year on year, which suggests a deliberate and sustained programming approach rather than one-off initiatives.”
Tungate also sees another positive shift in the West Australian Symphony Orchestra’s programming, which “more than doubled” the number of works in by women last year [from four in 2022, 2023 and 2024 to 10 in 2025] – in 2025. Overall, 10.2 percent of its works were written by women and 19.4 percent by living composers.
“It’s encouraging to see that movement, particularly from an orchestra that had previously been quite static in its programming.”
With the largest program out of any state orchestra Sydney Symphony Orchestra programmed a total of 127 works in 2025, with eight from female composers (6.1 per cent); 11 percent were by living composers, down from 13 percent last year.
While its representation of female living composers slightly increased, its representation of historical women and living male composers both fell slightly, as well.
Tungate’s 2025 stats also saw a reduction in works by women by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in 2025.
QSO from eight works to five (8 percent to 6 percent), and TSO from nine works to six (14.6 percent to 6.9 percent).
TSO’s 2025 program represented living composers at almost 30 percent; at QSO, this was 13.1 percent , with historical men comprising 85.7 percent of its program.
These stats are an important indicator towards equality, Tungate says, but they don’t tell the full story. The context in which a work is performed is an area she’s increasingly interested in.
“Are works by women being programmed in mainstage subscription concerts alongside canonical repertoire, or are they mostly appearing in specialist concerts, chamber series or themed events? In several cases this year, a significant proportion of works by women were concentrated into specific concerts dedicated to women composers or they were reserved for a chamber series in a different venue. While those events are valuable, they can also risk reinforcing the idea that these composers belong in a separate category rather than being fully integrated into the canon.”
Tungate also notes that female-composed works tend to be 20 minutes or less on average and trend towards overtures or concerti rather than symphonies.
“The upward trend in representation is promising, change is happening, just slowly,” Tungate explains. “At the same time, the results do reinforce that progress isn’t linear. There are different ways to slice the numbers, for example, rather than looking at the number of works programmed, we look at the number of concerts that include at least 1 work written by a woman, it paints a slightly different picture, but it’s still clear some orchestras are doing the work, and others just aren’t.”
Last year, Tungate hoped for overall representation of female composers to hit the 15 percent mark. She takes this result – and the fact female composers are now outcompeting the ‘Big Three’ – as a sign of progress.
“Every year, I hope these stats help another few people to become more curious about what other music is out there. The more audiences, performers, and artistic programmers can embrace something slightly different, the more likely we are to see change.”
More about Tenth Muses Initiative can be found here.
For the full analysis, see @womencomposersproject on Instagram.
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