The following is a list of female composers in the Western concert tradition, ordered by their year of birth. Women composers are disproportionately absent from music textbooks and concert programs that constitute the Western canon, even though many women have composed music. Such discrimination against women composers can be considered in the context of general societal attitudes about gender or perceived roles of men and women, many musicologists and critics have come to incorporate gender studies in assessing the history and practice of the art.