The promotion of women’s work in music is not a late twentieth-century phenomenon. Organizations such as the British Society of Women Musicians (1911) or the American Society of Women Composers (1920s) worked hard to improve the opportunities available for their members. But a new wave of feminism in the late 1960s brought an increased awareness of the position of women in the musical world and musicologists began to study historical women musicians and investigate the way that issues of gender function within the musical world.

Several membership organizations grew up which aimed to encourage and promote women’s music: the International Alliance of Women in Music, created in 1995 through the merging of the International League of Women Composers (1974), American Women Composers (1976) and the International Congress on Women in Music (1980) – as well as Germany’s Frau und Musik, Finland’s NaMu, the Netherlands’s Stichting Vrouw en Muziek and Britain’s Women in Music. Two all-women orchestras were formed specifically to play music by women composers: the American Women’s Philharmonic (1981) and the European Women’s Orchestra (1990s).