Wikipedia’s Disclaimer: “No Woman Composer Met the Criteria for Inclusion Above”

Earlier this month, California State University Long Beach (CSULB) held a Women’s Research Colloquium featured a discussion of the lack of female composers in opera.

Adriana Verdié, a lecturer in CSULB’s Bob Cole Conservatory of Music,  discussed “From Muses to Creators, Opera by a Female Composer, a topic spurred by research that shows the huge disparity between male and female opera composers. While she was researching recently composed operas, she discovered that a Wikipedia page about opera composers issued this disclaimer:

“A number of reasons […] have been suggested to explain the relatively few women who have been composers of opera, and no woman composer met the criteria for inclusion above. However, some experts in our sample disagreed and named one or all of the women below as comparable to those (men) already listed.”

What do you think about the lack of “comparable” women opera composers?

Read more about CSULB’s colloquium: http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/?p=23145