A report published this week by The Conversation has drawn international attention to severe gender imbalance in Australian opera.

That such bias exists will come as a surprise to only a few. That it is so extreme may shock many.

Co-authored by Caitlin Vincent (University of Melbourne), Bronwyn Coate (RMIT) and Katya Johanson (Edith Cowan University, Perth), the report’s statistical analysis of productions staged by Opera Australia, Opera Queensland, the State Opera of South Australia, Victorian Opera and West Australian Opera from 2005 to 2020 reveals a startling underrepresentation of women in artistic leadership roles.

For example, the report notes, less than 3% of conductors and 19% of directors credited at Opera Australia were women. The State Opera of South Australia did not credit a single woman conductor between 2005 and 2020.

Opera Australia’s La boheme.

Women also saw low representation as designers – 21% of set designers; 9% of lighting designers.

Risk-averse programming of “safe” canonical operas (Puccini’s La bohème; Bizet’s Carmen, for example) further exacerbates the issue, the report concludes:

“On canonical operas, women’s representation as conductors dropped to less than 1%. Women directors and designers saw almost universal drops in...