Women leading otherwise? Rethinking leadership configurations in the music industry through Keychange

Women continue to face systemic barriers to exercising leadership in the music industry. This article critically examines Keychange, a transnational initiative that seeks to transform the industry through talent development advocacy and leadership training for women and gender-diverse individuals. Drawing on participant interviews and situated within a relational and collective leadership framework, the study explores how leadership in the cultural and creative industries, when approached in relation to women and inequality, is not solely an individual attribute, but emerges within the networked configuration of people around a common purpose. These collaborative and affective practices are embedded within relationships of mutual support and shared purpose, offering tangible benefits for individual participants and, potentially, for the sector as a whole. The combination of feminine leadership and feminist approaches provide new and diversified models on how the industry can be led. Conventionally gendered behaviours and tropes remain deeply embedded, however, and it will require sustained activist energy if the tentative gains made to date are to be consolidated through deeper structural transformation. The findings offer insights relevant not only for the design of future leadership programmes but also for an academic discourse struggling to articulate the distinctiveness and value of women and leadership in the cultural and creative industries.