Where are the Women?

Photo by Yan Krukov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-playing-electric-guitar-grayscale-photo-9009574/

When looking at all spaces of the music industry, there is an obvious element missing. While many of us can think of a few women musicians off the top of our heads, their accomplishments tend to go overlooked. However, when you go beyond the main stage of the music, you see even fewer women present. Why is this?

While many may reply to this question by saying that women simply do not want to work in this industry or are incapable, they are wrong as this has been proven to be false. Many women are more than capable and willing to work in music with their gender having no effect on this. However, their gender affects how others view and treat them, especially in music. According to the Women In Mix study (Balli, 2022), 77% of women felt that their gender affected the way they were treated in the industry. The music industry is described as a "boys' club" (Balli, 2022), preventing many women from even getting a chance to get through the door, and even when they do they are not always taken seriously.

Looking at the music industry as a whole, we can see the lack of gender diversity. Women make up 12.9% of songwriters as of 2020 this is only a 1.9% increase from 2012 (Smith, Pieper, Choueiti, Hernandez, & Yao, 2021). This trend continues in other sectors of the industry as well with 21.6% of all music artists being women. Seeing women in production is even less frequent. 2.6% of producers are women with only 9 out of 1,291 producing credits going to women of color (Smith, Pieper, Choueiti, Hernandez, & Yao, 2021).

There is such a lack of women that to some it may appear less favorable when a song is made by all women, but no one bats an eye when the same is done by men. In a report discussing the inclusion of women in the recording studio, it is stated that “57.3% of 900 popular songs have no women writers.” (Smith, Pieper, Choueiti, Hernandez, & Yao, 2021).

Women continue to not be represented, uplifted, or given a chance within the music industry. There is a lack of support and gatekeeping that needs to be observed by all. Women continue to fight for their place, but should not have to in order to be respected in a male-dominated industry.

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Citations

Balli, E. (2022, March 25). 'women in the mix'. ASU News. Retrieved from https://news.asu.edu/20220325-creativity-women-mix

Smith, S. L., Pieper, K., Choueiti, M., Hernandez, K., & Yao, K. (2021). Inclusion in the Recording Studio? Gender and Race/Ethnicity of Artists, Songwriters & Producers across 900 Popular Songs from 2012-2020.