Mentoring network The Cat’s Mother is teaming up with music licensing company PPL to provide support for young women entering the music industry. The collaboration will see the two organisations work together in 2021 to help young women build networks and knowledge as the foundation to a successful career in music, through a series of events and activities. 

Formed in November 2019, The Cat’s Mother is a unique mentoring network that provides an impactful, voluntary consultancy service for aspiring young women starting their careers in the creative industries. ‘Counting the Music Industry’, a gender gap analysis from 2019, found that, while participation in music education between genders is nearly equal, female graduates appear to be less successful than their male counterparts in developing a career.

Supported by accomplished female executives from across the UK’s music sector, such as Maggie Crowe OBE (BPI), Emma Banks (CAA) and Fay Hoyte (EMI Records), The Cat’s Mother gives professional women the opportunity to “bank” hours of their time and expertise which are gifted to aspiring young women by way of informal, 30-minute mentoring meetings. The aim of The Cat’s Mother’s is to disrupt the norm, inspire and impart real-life advice and knowledge from current female music executives, and in doing so create the next cohort of female industry leaders.

Natalie Wade, Co-Founder of The Cat’s Mother said:

“PPL was the first partner we approached to join us in hosting these events. Their commitment to transparency in addressing the gender pay gap, their work across the UK and generally, being really nice people to work with made them the natural partner for us.”

Kate Reilly, Director of People and Organisational Development at PPL said:

“By connecting talented, aspiring women with some of the most experienced female executives in music, The Cat’s Mother offers a unique opportunity to those that may otherwise struggle, through no fault of their own, to start and sustain a career in our industry. It is a pleasure not just to support their initiative but to help expand it – we hope that, through our events, we will inspire and support even more ambitious young women.

In recent months, we have worked to further improve the diversity of representation in the company and we will continue to do so.  We welcomed three women onto PPL’s Board at our AGM, and we have established an internal Diversity Forum which has an open remit to suggest ideas for change to back up our commitment to diversity across PPL. By working with The Cat’s Mother we can further support women, of all backgrounds, to establish themselves as the future leaders of the music industry.”

Details of the collaboration will be announced in early 2021.