Jane Asylum says:
Give or take a few years, Jon and I grew up in similar times and in similar (though not wholly the same) cultures. We share the same language, we were exposed to a lot of the same music, and up until sometime in the 80s, we even shared the same Queen. However, my musical world was very different. Perhaps as a girl, I thought that rock belonged to women as much as my favorite sports did. And with the likes of Suzi Quattro occasionally guest starring on my favorite TV show, wearing leather and rocking a kick-ass attitude and guitar, as Jon recounts, Nancy Wilson (Heart) ripping solos on the airwaves, and Bonnie Raitt featuring on our home stereo, it never occurred to me that there was a rock band boys’ club.
In fact, any pretty pop stars that I do remember — Andy Gibb and Sean Cassidy come to mind — were male, and the only person I remember in tight-fitting leotards was David Bowie, until the 80s, when tight-fitting leotards were regrettably the uniform of choice for any male rock or heavy metal band worth their moose knuckles.
Even my favorite vocalists as a child — Cher, Etta James, and Tina Turner — weren’t singing pretty with their aggressive, gritty styles. I don’t remember women belting out songs that were any more soppy, sentimental, or sugary than “Sometimes When We Touch” by Dan Hill or Paul Anka’s “Having My Baby.” What a whole other can of worms that song is.
Of course, I was raised by a working single mother, a feminist, during a time when women were challenging more than just the rock band boys club, but also where more things were shifting due to the feminist movement and the increasing visibility of women in new and expanding roles. My mother certainly encouraged me to do and be whatever I dreamt and I don’t know too many young parents from that time who would have told their daughters they’d be limited by their gender when they grew up. I think it was a hopeful time for many women, especially those envisioning opportunities that they didn’t have, but that their daughters would.
Of course, I became acutely aware of the gender divide after puberty, especially in music throughout the 80s as I poured through magazine interviews with everyone from Madonna to Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) to Patti Smith. But the 90s offered some hope of change, particularly with the rise of the Riot Grrrl movement — not without its problems — hip-hop culture, and indie labels.
Women like Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill), Janet Weiss (formerly Sleater-Kinney), Cheryl James and Sandra Denton (Salt N Pepa) shredded guitars, banged drums, and belted out unapologetic lyrics with as much passion and power as any male counterpart, challenging not just musical norms but societal expectations of what women, and sometimes gender identity, could and should be. And they’re still doing it today in their 50s, 60s, and 70s, which itself is a testament to the fact that some things have changed indeed.
Nevertheless, as the #MeToo movement revealed, much hasn’t changed either. And on this note I’ll leave you to read Jon’s excellent article.
Jon Ewing says:
Being a child of the 1970s and 80s, I grew up in a pretty blinkered music world where rock bands were boys whilst girls were pop singers. A notable exception was Suzi Quatro, whose career was predicated not on her undeniable talent as performer but on the sensational novelty of seeing a girl with a leather jacket, a guitar and an attitude, which was tantamount to putting an alien under the spotlight. That she was the exception to the rule did very little to undermine the rule, which was that women in music should sing prettily, wear elegant gowns or tight-fitting leotards, and not be obscured by a musical instrument, with the possible exception of a piano to give added gravitas.
I think I also grew up with the attitude that boys made music for boys – raucous, anti-authoritarian and raunchy – while girls made music for girls, which was soppy, sentimental and sugary. The punk rock scene shone that alien spotlight on other aliens with fresh ideas and provocative lyrics like Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex and Viv Albertine of The Slits, but I can’t pretend I was sufficiently evolved in my musical taste or sexual politics to appreciate them when I was nine years old. Now I’m in my 50s and a lot of people seem to believe those days of inequality are over. But the numbers tell a different story.
In ages past, the music business was chewing up and spitting out young people regardless of gender. Exploitation was commonplace for a business in which no performer expected a lifelong career. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the industry was at its most cynical in the way it used young women. While men in music could get by with boy-next-door looks, women rarely broke into pop unless they had pin-up bodies and an angelic face. And that’s to say nothing of the things they were pressured to do by men in order to get an opportunity to perform. Many female singers were little more than an outlet for Tin Pan Alley songwriters, unable to or discouraged from performing their own songs. And when their youthful looks began to fade, their time was up.
Not much had changed as the 90s came and went. The global rap, hip-hop, grunge and indie scenes were all dominated by men, with a few exceptions. In the pop world, the Spice Girls promised us “girl power” but instead of real influence they gave women working-class ambition and self-belief, although some have characterised them a Trojan horse for feminism for their generation. And it’s true that in the 21st Century, there are hints of progress. We are acknowledging the problem and discussing it. But are things changing?
In principle, the rise of streaming services and social media has freed musicians from the constraints of the old industry, in which a woman’s future was in the hands of a small number of major record labels run by men. Nowadays, both men and women can manage their own careers and reap the benefits of their popularity. But there are still barriers to women getting heard and appreciated. The UK parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee report on Misogyny in Music in 2024 contains the following shocking but not entirely surprising statistics:
“Women represent less than a third of top-selling artists in music and only 14% of songwriters. In 2022, just 187 women and non-binary people were credited as either producer or engineer on the top 50 streamed tracks in 14 genres, compared to 3,781 men. Of all songwriters and composers who received a royalty in 2020 from their music being streamed, downloaded, broadcast, or performed, only one in six (16.7%) were women.”
And it’s not just recorded music where the disparity exists. A report by Sky News Research in April 2023 analysed the line-ups of 104 music festivals in the UK that summer and calculated that across all stages only 29% of acts were female-fronted, while women represented only 20% of headline acts. “And if you count the total number of performers on stage during headline slots, only one in 10 (11%) are women.”
The daily tally by Everynoise typically shows that women make up nearly half of Spotify listeners and yet less than a quarter of streams are by female or mixed-gender artists. And the male listening habits I remember from my youth have not changed much: more than four-fifths of the music played by male listeners is performed by male artists. But that may not be wholly by choice. A 2021 paper by Dr Christine Bauert of Utrecht University and Andrés Ferraro from Universitat Pompeu in Barcelona analysed multiple data sets of hundreds of thousands of listener statistics and found that songs by women are underrepresented by streaming platform algorithms. On average, the first six or more tracks recommended were by a man, meaning you’d have to listen to seven or eight songs before you could be sure of hearing one woman perform.
In spite of this historic and ongoing imbalance, women continue to make outstanding popular music. In 2023, according to statistics from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) reported in The Financial Times four of the year’s five biggest tracks in the United Kingdom and seven of the year’s top 10 songs were by female artists, thanks to women spending a record-breaking 31 weeks at the top of the UK singles charts.
But times are changing and while women continue to fight for the representation they deserve, both in the studio, on stage, in retail outlets, TV and radio and streaming services, new battle lines are being drawn. And musicians, as they have always done, continue to reflect and amplify the changing attitudes of young people.
The distinct dividing line between male and female is no longer universally accepted and whilst the movement of trans-exclusionary radical feminists refuses to accept it and fears it will set back the feminist cause, a new wave of artists no longer recognises gender pigeonholes. An increasing number of feminists see the trans community as natural allies. As Grace Petrie puts it in her very personal song of redemption ‘Black Tie’: “The images that fucked ya were a patriarchal structure. And you never will surrender to a narrow view of gender. And I swear there’ll come a day when you won’t worry what they say on the labels on the doors. You will figure out what’s yours“.
References
Misogyny in Music publications.parliament.uk
Sky News Research news.sky.com
Everynoise everynoise.com
Break the Loop: Gender Imbalance in Music Recommenders dl.acm.org
Financial Times report on BPI figures ft.com
Track Listing
- Club Cougar – Nadine Shah
- Masseduction – St. Vincent
- Monsters and Angels – Voice Of The Beehive
- Real Woman – Poison Girls
- Black Tie – Grace Petrie
- Hard Headed Woman – Wanda Jackson
- We Don’t Play Guitars – Chicks On Speed
- The Men Who Rule the World – Garbage
- Bad Kitty – Liz Phair
- BitchSlut – Anna Wise
- No Man Is Big Enough For My Arms – Ibeyi
- what it means to be a girl – EMELINE
- Sheela-na-gig – PJ Harvey
- Nameless, Faceless – Courtney Barnett
- Don’t Beat the Girl out of My Boy – Anna Calvi
- Just One of the Guys – Jenny Lewis
- Sea Hearts – Honeyblood
- You Don’t Own Me – The Pack a.d.
- Hot Mess – girli
- Not a Pretty Girl – Ani DiFranco
- The Future is Female – Madame Gandhi
- Ladies First – Queen Latifah
About the Curators
Jane Asylum
I’ve set-off around the world a few times as a digital nomad. My favorite places are off-the-beaten-path spaces. I enjoy good food, although I’m a sucker for trying anything once. Discovering new music and artists is a passion, but I adore retro tracks and nostalgic songs. Whether fueled by imagination, or anchored in the real world, I live for adventure, especially when set to the beat of diverse and eclectic playlists.
Ready. Set. Join me on a sonic adventure!
