Gender Politics in the Music Industry

The extreme gender inequality that continues to shape music making has been extensively documented by researchers for decades. Scholars have explored how people who identify as women are pushed to the margins through limited access to music-related spaces (Björck 2013), sexist assumptions about their ability to handle instruments and technology (Clawson 1999), exclusion from male-dominated networks often described as a “boys’ club” (Leonard 2016: 40), and taste-making and archiving practices that produce canons and histories centered on men (Reddington 2007; Strong 2011; Schmutz and Faupel 2010).

Ethnographic, audience-based, and localized studies have documented how women are particularly underrepresented as performers in electronic music (see Gadir 2017; Farrugia 2012) and heavy metal (see Hill 2016). More recently, industry-focused data has started to appear, drawn from reports, media articles, and academic work. These figures reveal that women earn less in royalties (Strong and Cannizzo 2017), receive less radio airplay (McCormack 2015), appear less frequently in the charts (Lafranse et al 2011), are underrepresented on Spotify playlists (Pelly 2018), face shorter careers (Lieb 2013), and occupy few key decision-making positions (McCormack 2015). Research examining how education and gender outcomes intersect in the industry has added another layer, highlighting how structural issues in learning and policy affect who develops the skills needed to thrive in these fields (de Boise 2017; Born and Devine 2015). Still, much work remains.

To grasp why gender inequality persists in the music business, it must be situated within shifting working conditions and the rise of creative industries as a framing concept for artistic work. The term “creative industries” has become a catch-all for fields like music, film, television, visual art, writing, and sometimes IT and advertising. In many countries, treating creative activities as engines of economic growth has boosted their perceived value, yet it also reflects a neoliberal focus on economic worth as the primary measure of an activity’s importance and places the individual at center stage (Gill et al. 2017). Individualism shapes how creators can address inequality. Creative workers often strongly subscribe to the idea of meritocracy, a belief that success goes to the most talented and industrious regardless of identity (Strong and Cannizzo 2017: vi). This notion works alongside a postfeminist sensibility (Gill et al. 2017) that treats feminist goals as obsolete, downplaying structural approaches to gender inequality (see also McRobbie 2008). While creative industries enjoy a reputation for being liberal and tolerant, this has not led to substantially greater inclusivity. Moreover, deep faith in their fairness can prevent closer scrutiny of actual conditions, particularly by those holding privileged positions in the system (Taylor and O’Brien 2017). The precarious nature of gig-economy work that characterizes the creative industries—and is spilling into other areas—further disadvantages women. Risk is offloaded onto workers, and any traits or circumstances that prevent endless flexibility and responsiveness to market demands can easily derail a career (Gill 2002; Gill et al. 2017; Hesmondhalgh and Baker 2015). Greater caring responsibilities and lack of access to the masculine subjectivities required to succeed in such settings make women more vulnerable than men (Miller 2016).

These are some of the defining aspects of the music-industry landscape that the articles in this special edition address. Leonard (2016: 37) observed that popular music studies have concentrated heavily on performers while paying “relatively little attention … to how gender structures the experiences of those within other areas of employment in the music industries.” This issue of IASPM@Journal includes work on performers but also examines industry personnel such as venue owners, producers, festival promoters, and label employees to broaden our understanding of how gender operates across these structures. Most papers remain within a binary gendered framework—partly because that is still how the industries under review understand gender—but several offer more expansive or intersectional contributions or consider how more inclusive approaches are beginning to make a difference.

The special issue opens with Kara Attrep’s contribution to jazz and blues studies. Through a political-economy lens and an intersectional discourse approach, Attrep redirects attention to place by critically engaging archival methods and musical labor. She examines the work of female slaves, female juke-joint proprietors and later lawn-party organizers, and finally, women who ran jazz clubs, focusing on Ada “Bricktop” Smith. The article highlights how existing narratives about jazz and blues history carry a gendered bias toward male musicians and male owners of larger venues. In drawing together diverse archival materials, Attrep showcases how feminist work and gender analysis can deepen our grasp of music history and political economy by filling gaps, particularly in genres still dominated by masculine historical accounts. This reminder that women have always played essential music roles, mostly out of view, makes for an important contribution to scholarship reasserting women’s place in popular-music history.

Toby Bennett’s article follows, offering an analysis of industry discourse on gender inequality from trade press and interviews with behind-the-scenes personnel. Bennett identifies four themes that complicate conversations within the industry. First, the nature of work itself emerges as a factor, especially how industry structure and the challenges of collective action hinder progress on equality. Second, debates arise over what inequality actually means and how to combat it, including questions about positive discrimination and moving beyond binary gender approaches. Third, intergenerational justice surfaces, prominently when younger women face criticism from older industry figures over their expression of sexuality—a conflict reminiscent of feminist generational disputes. Fourth, Bennett addresses epistemic injustice: who gets to know what about industry working conditions. He contends that understanding these nuanced internal narratives about equality is crucial for finding effective paths forward.

Cecilia Björck and Åsa Bergman examine women’s representation at jazz festivals in Sweden and the US, gathering perspectives from organizers, cultural agencies, activists, and artists. Complementing Attrep’s work, this article outlines the challenges women experience in jazz and unpacks the gendered narratives governing popular and scholarly views of the genre. Reporting on a project aimed at making jazz scenes more gender-equal in both countries, the authors use poststructural discourse analysis to explore resistance. Unexpected research subjects in Sweden pushed back against being labeled “women in jazz.” The authors connect this response to similar patterns in other scenes and situate it within the different political contexts of the United States and Sweden. Younger participants further frame their concerns through a “discourse of diversity” (54). The piece concludes by emphasizing the complexity of the discursive landscapes in which such initiatives unfold and by calling for more intersectional and considered approaches to visibility and equity.

Focusing on the recording studio, Helen Reddington considers the producer-engineer dynamic through a ventriloquism framework. Historically, male producers have been the norm, meaning women’s musical labor has often been filtered through a masculine sensibility—sometimes with men controlling or dominating women during the recording process. Drawing on accounts from female producers and engineers, Reddington examines whether these power relations might shift as more women enter the studio. She asks whether producers truly speak through the voices they record and whether results differ based on gender pairings. Responses reveal a spectrum: from women literally putting words into male musicians’ mouths (or withholding certain words), to collaborative approaches in which the producer’s values become part of the performance, to women who see themselves as capturing presences with minimal interference. Reddington’s informants point to new sonic possibilities from recording men—and from potentially distinct ways of working with other women—approaches that prioritize performance authenticity over top-down imposition. This rethinks studio power dynamics.

Music festivals reappear in Cecile Navarro’s article on Urban Women Week, a Senegalese festival boosting women in hip hop. Based on ethnographic research in Senegal’s rap scene and feminist thinking about festivals as community-building spaces, Navarro offers a detailed study of the event through a glocal gender-politics lens. Examining intersections of culture, religion, music, and global gender initiatives, the article reflects on what female hip-hop artists experience in a scene anchored in patriarchal norms. Navarro finds that while Urban Women Week functions in a Senegalese context and provides real support for female rappers, it stops short of any radical challenge to patriarchy within either the music scene or broader society.

The issue closes with two empirical studies focusing on women’s experiences making music. Charity Marsh explores how community arts projects counter gendered power structures in the industry through supportive spaces, strong female models, and connections between girls and female-identified professionals—spotlighting Girls Rock Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. Analyzing voices of women and campers alongside her own observations, Marsh shows how these narratives rebel against established gendered ideas about music technology, creativity, and the music business more broadly, fostered by female role models and skill-sharing into a mutual, feminist music space. Chaptering components yet to be fully tapped within the wider industry, she treats camps like Girls Rock Regina (building on earlier popular-music and feminist scholarship) as feminist interventions whose more radical effects may not yet be realized.

Finally, Caroline O’Sullivan investigates change over time in Dublin’s dance and indie scenes, comparing the paths of men and women. Her research indicates that although the mid-2000s saw a rise in involvement for women, that participation has dropped since then. The men in her study were likelier to stick with music, whereas women more often left it behind. Contributing factors included male gatekeeping around technology reducing women’s ways of handling gear, caring responsibilities leading to waning music involvement, and discouraging interactions with men. Tensions also surfaced between enjoyment from social aspects of performance—such as collaborative pre-gig dressing-up rituals—and how such elements were dismissed or turned into style scrutiny rather than regard for musical skill. Crucially, O’Sullivan observes that runs in equality do not last forever; without vigilance, representation can recede as circumstances shift, and Dublin offers a striking instance.

The response to the call papers for this special issue reveals that gender politics in the music industry remains a lively area of research. The articles gathered in IASPM@Journal shed light on the regimes of discourse about gender within professional environments and among people in that shift, helping us to grasp those complicated clusters. In venturing into these often re-organized spaces, this collected roster inserts fresh perspectives concerning oppression and tactics applied by people and associations in Europe, Canada beyond United States continental North Africa overlapping industrial gears around the hub's revenue. Refining intersectionality markers often skipped across explorations measured, the studies emit newer lens resolutions accompanying handles for later viewer judgments. Trailing off, commentary will then process the #metoo activities drawn for the streets since—highlight volume shows at least signs in order continuing actions parallel.

McRobbie, A., 2008. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage. McRobbie, A., 2009. ‘Reflections on Feminism, Immaterial Labour and the Post-Fordist Regime’, New Formations 70: 60-76. Miller, D. K., 2016. ‘Gender and the artist archetype: understanding gender inequality in artistic careers’, Sociology Compass 10 (2): 119-131.

Music Victoria, 2015. Women in the Victorian Contemporary Music Industry. Melbourne: Music Victoria. Reddington, H., 2007. The Lost Women of Rock Music. Sheffield: Equinox. Schmutz, V. and Faulpel, A., 2010. ‘Gender and Cultural Consecration in Popular Music’, Social Forces 89 (2): 685-707. Strong, C., 2011. ‘Grunge, Riot Grrrl and the Forgetting of Women in Rock’, Popular Communication 44 (2): 398-416.

Strong, C. and Cannizzo, F., 2017. Australian Women Screen Composers: Career Barriers and Pathways: Research Report, Melbourne, Australia: RMIT University. Taylor, M. and O’Brien, D., 2017. ‘“Culture is a Meritocracy”: Why Creative Workers’ Attitudes may Reinforce Social Inequality’, Sociological Research Online 22 (4): 27-47.