Female pianists favoured over men under major competition’s rules

Female pianists are to be favoured over men, according to rules for a leading piano competition.

The jury of the Leeds International Piano Competition has been instructed, in the case of a tie between a male and female contestant, to “consider advancing her first”.

The preferential treatment aims to help to “tackle male dominance”, according to the rulebook.

New rules – introduced this year – also stipulate that jurors must cancel their votes and start again if any round of the competition “significantly reduces the ratio of women to men”.

Members of the jury have been required to undergo training which is aimed at “eliminating both conscious and unconscious bias in order to promote a more equal environment for all competitors”.

The new set of rules governing the 2024 competition has produced a set of five finalists, two of which are women, including the London-based rising star Junyan Chen and Vietnamese pianist Khanh Nhi Luong.

The stipulation means Ms Chen and Ms Nhi Luong could have received preferential treatment in the qualifying rounds because of their gender, pushing them ahead in the competition ahead of male counterparts. There is no suggestion that this is the case.

The reform comes after Fiona Sinclair, the Leeds International Piano Competition CEO, raised concerns about unequal outcomes for men and women in classical music competitions.

In an opinion piece for The Guardian published in March, she set out a commitment to “modelling a more equitable stage”, and the competition has since taken steps to “tackle the long-standing issue of male dominance in the piano world”.

Ms Sinclair has written that the competition leadership “reviewed our voting processes with a lawyer”.

The voting process now ensures that in the event that a round of the competition produces an all-male selection, there will be a revote.

There will also be a re-vote if the proportion of women remaining in the competition is significantly reduced in a round of voting, and this will apply all the way through to the semi-finals.

Before the competition begins, the process of selection will be made blind, with minimal biographical details about competitors provided as a way of reducing the risk of bias.

It is hoped that the measures will help to correct the event’s disparities in outcomes for men and women.

Ms Sinclair previously wrote: “The Leeds’s own record shows that just two women have triumphed in the past 20 editions of the competition, only a third of our applications this year have come from women and only 18 per cent of the most recent top 40 international piano competitions have been won by women.”

The Leeds International Piano Competition said the reforms were “part of our broader effort to address the long-standing issue of gender inequality in the piano world and foster a more balanced, equitable and inclusive competition”.

The lengthy process has whittled down the contest to five finalists, three male and two female, including one British pianist, Julian Miles Trevelyan. Ms Chen, a student at the Royal Academy of Music, is also in the final five.

The other finalists are Kai-Min Chang, from Taiwan, Khanh Nhi Luong, from Vietnam, and Canada’s Jaeden Izik-Dzurko.