It is widely accepted that jazz has historically been a male-dominated genre and continues to be so today. But one particular medium that has contributed to breaking down gender barriers in jazz has been the
online magazine Women in Jazz Media out of the UK, which in November 2025 celebrated its five- year anniversary. View online or download its 14th edition, published last December, here.
Women in Jazz Media is the brainchild of founder Fiona Ross, a vocalist, pianist and composer as well as a journalist and JJA member on the Book Awards committee, who serves as its publisher. I sat down with her via Zoom to discuss the origin of the magazine, its important anniversary, and the future direction of the organization, which she said began as a Facebook page seeking out fellow jazz journalists, asking women in the industry if they believed they were held back in their profession advancement by being a woman.
The response was startling and immediate, from women around the globe — the UK, Spain, China and elsewhere. Ross realized the importance of having an organization to support women journalists. Her
idea evolved into the shape of a consortium of women from across the world, in all facets of the industry — not only musicians; but journalists, photographers, publicists, promoters, presenters, radio programmers and DJs, etc. – who felt that they were left out, ignored or marginalized. This concept grew to include a one-off online magazine to coincide with the celebration of International Women’s Day (March 8) 2020. The magazine was so well accepted that she decided to continue with regularly publishing Women in Jazz Media magazine three times a year.
The magazine now has a team of women writers and contributors (JJA members Enid Farber, Alice Hill and Mirian Arbalejo among them). Ross is publisher and executive editor of the non-profit entity, produced from her home office in London. Women in Jazz Media now has 20,000 followers across social media and continues to grow. It has visual appeal, including wonderful images and photographs. I am amazed at the continued professional quality of each issue, given that in addition to being a performer and composer Ross holds down a full-time job.
I am particularly impressed with her attitude towards having men who are supportive of women in the magazine as ‘guest contributors’ (myself included: I write a regular column which consists of a playlist of new album highlights featuring women as leaders, instrumentalists, vocalists, composers, etc. – a role that I relish).
“As women, we already know what the issues are,” Ross says emphatically. “I mean, we don’t have all the solutions, but as women, we already know where the barriers are, where the challenges are. We can’t fix them on our own, we can’t change people’s mindsets on our own. It has to be all-encompassing. And that’s really key to everything that we do, that it’s not about women.
“The dream is that we don’t talk about gender. So how can we not include men in that conversation? And it’s not about, you know, women taking over the world — it’s about, actually, ‘Can we all do our thing, irrelevant of how old we are, irrelevant of the color of our skin, irrelevant of our gender?’ The dream is that we want to be all doing this, so we need to involve everybody in that conversation.”
Asked about her hopes for the future of the magazine, Fiona Ross states “The dream is that Women in Jazz Media doesn’t need to exist and that we don’t need to talk about gender at all, or anything else, that it is actually just about great music, whether that’s people writing about music, or performing it, or playing it, you know. But . . . we’re not quite there yet.”
I think that is a wonderful aspiration. Here’s to looking forward to the 10-year Anniversary!
Brad Stone, based in Gilroy, California, is a member of the JJA Book Awards committee, as well as producer, programmer and host of “The Creative Source,” “Chats with the Cats” and “A Passport to Prog,” streaming #OnDemand via SoulandJazz.com
