To Örebro University

Popular music life is permeated by both male dominance and gender segregation – the latter most notably concerns musical instrument choice. The pervasiveness of these phenomena is suggested by both music research on gender and statistics. In this study, the overarching ambition is to explain boys' reproductive approaches to popular music/making. In order to successfully carry out a study with such an explanatory ambition, a theory of causality in social life is necessary. In this thesis the notion of causality is taken from a critical realist tradition.

However, explanation and causal analysis is most often rejected among music researchers who deal with questions of gender. Nonetheless, I would argue that explanatory ambitions are tacit starting points in this kind of research, and the field would stand to gain from making them explicit. Therefore I have formulated two aims, which my study addresses. The first one is to explain boys' reproductive approaches to popular music/making, in regard to male dominance and gender segregation. The second one is more theoretically oriented: to apply critical realism within music research on gender.

The aims has been fulfilled by, first, identifying the boys' adoption of and distancing from different approaches to popular music/musicians and musical instruments. Second, the boys' approaches are explained by reconstructing the social, cultural and psychological conditions that has enabled them. Altogether, this demonstrates why and how the boys' reproductive approaches arise, which (potentially) lead to a reproduction of the male dominance and gender segregation within the popular music field.