section_path: Organization/Selection and appointment of members/History of gender in ensembles
section_name: History of gender in ensembles
paragraph_text: History of gender in ensembles
  
  Historically, major professional orchestras have been mostly or entirely composed of men. The first women members hired in professional orchestras have been harpists. The Vienna Philharmonic, for example, did not accept women to permanent membership until 1997, far later than comparable orchestras (the other orchestras ranked among the world's top five by Gramophone in 2008). The last major orchestra to appoint a woman to a permanent position was the Berlin Philharmonic. In February 1996, the Vienna Philharmonic's principal flute, Dieter Flury, told Westdeutscher Rundfunk that accepting women would be "gambling with the emotional unity (emotionelle Geschlossenheit) that this organism currently has". In April 1996, the orchestra's press secretary wrote that "compensating for the expected leaves of absence" of maternity leave would be a problem.
  
  In 1997, the Vienna Philharmonic was "facing protests during a tour" by the National Organization for Women and the International Alliance for Women in Music. Finally, "after being held up to increasing ridicule even in socially conservative Austria, members of the orchestra gathered in an extraordinary meeting on the eve of their departure and agreed to admit a woman, Anna Lelkes, as harpist." As of 2013, the orchestra has six female members; one of them, violinist Albena Danailova, became one of the orchestra's concertmasters in 2008, the first woman to hold that position in that orchestra. In 2012, women made up 6% of the orchestra's membership. VPO president Clemens Hellsberg said the VPO now uses completely screened blind auditions.
  
  In 2013, an article in Mother Jones stated that while "any prestigious orchestras have significant female membership — women outnumber men in the New York Philharmonic 's violin section — and several renowned ensembles, including the National Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, and the Minnesota Symphony, are led by women violinists", the double bass, brass, and percussion sections of major orchestras "... are still predominantly male." A 2014 BBC article stated that the "... introduction of 'blind' auditions, where a prospective instrumentalist performs behind a screen so that the judging panel can exercise no gender or racial prejudice, has seen the gender balance of traditionally male-dominated symphony orchestras gradually shift."