Another day: another new music competition. Not a day goes by for my overworked inbox without the message from another classical music competition. Today’s announcement brings news of the La Maestra International Music Competition for Women Conductors, a joint initiative by Philharmonie de Paris and the Paris Mozart Orchestra, which has its inauguration in 2020.

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La Maestra’s mission is clear. The competition underscores a strictly gender equality-based jury and seeks to address the male-biased dominance of the field. You could and should hash tag, tweet and instagram the memo to the thousands of international competitions, reminding them to join the ongoing debate for women and gender parity across every sector. Serious gender-parity lapses pervade all aspects of this industry. Case in point: there were no women on the piano jury of this year’s XVI Tchaikovsky International Competition and Laureate Akiko Suwanai represented the lone female voice on the violin jury. The Tchaikovsky is not alone.

But let’s leave the prickly yet vital gender parity issue to the side and move to the point of the growth of the sector. Gustav Alink, Director of the Alink-Argerich Foundation, a global information centre for...