Inside an old yellow suitcase sits a laptop with the frozen screenshot of the trailer for “Making it Happen”. The video comes to life by alternating between a close up of eyes and text ultimately revealing the message “To challenge the notion that women can’t make quality music”.

Senior Kristine Kruer, a lifelong musician and single mother, created a documentary  examining the negative stereotypes about female musicians, focused on the stories of 11 musicians in the Cincinnati area.  

“This is a project to demonstrate how women combat negative stereotypes against them in the music scene,” Kruer said.

Kruer was inspired to complete the documentary after witnessing an underrepresentation of female musicians.

“I go to a lot of open mics and I would be the only woman there and to me that was weird,” Kruer said. “I want to confront this in a positive way. ”

Underrepresentation of female musicians is not unique to this area.

In a recent Pixable article, Sophy Ziss and Mariel Loveland found that in 2014 less than 20 percent of acts at major music festivals included women.

“It is not about ‘men are bad’. We have to work together to get anywhere. This is about bringing people together on an equal playing field,” Kruer said.

The documentary will be shown at Wunderbar in Covington and The Southgate House Revival in Newport in May. Entry into the show will be donation based with all proceeds benefiting Young Women Christian Association For more details email krystkru@gmail.com.