Women in Music

How Can the Music Industry Better Support Women? Women working as performing artists, songwriters, producers, and on the business side of the music industry have long bonded with each other over stories of sexual harassment, being scolded for assertiveness, being themselves criticized, or hearing other women musicians being criticized as too sexual, not sexual enough, too feminine, too manly, too outspoken, too fat, too political, pandering to the mainstream, being intentionally outré, and so much more. And that’s when there are any other women in the studio, in the tour bus, or in the boardroom, at all. https://blog.songtrust.com/music-industry-support-for-women

How Women Are Changing The Face Of Engineering And Producing
The lack of women engineers and producers in music is not news. Historically, the recording studio has rarely seen women outside of the reception area or, in the case of a performance venue, in the box office. And as a 2012 report in The Journal on the Art of Record Production shows, these same conversations about gender imbalance in music production have been happening over and over for decades — with little progress being made. While these conversations keep happening, the report says, there is less talk about why “music production in the popular music industry has, for most of its history … been a male reality” — and what women’s experiences in this industry are actually like. https://www.npr.org/2018/02/27/588422558/if-you-want-to-be-somewhere-you-ve-got-to-occupy-it

Where Are All the Female Music Producers?
During the last decade, only two women, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, have landed on Billboard’s year-end Top Producers chart, for their own songs. Why does record production remain the ultimate boys club of the music industry? There are myriad reasons, ­including a lack of role models. https://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/record-labels/8095146/where-are-all-the-female-music-producers

Why Aren’t There More Women Working in Audio?
Like with many STEM-oriented fields, music production and sound engineering are dominated by men—though that’s very slowly changing. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/why-arent-there-more-women-working-in-audio/537663

I could write about the times guys have mansplained guitar amps to me, postulated that women are intrinsically less capable of grasping music theory, objectified me at work…

How Studios Subliminally Silence Women
Producer, engineer and musician Grace Banks argues that recording studios are all-too-often male dominated and even hostile to women, from outright misogyny to the subtle messages in the buildings themselves. What might be done to change this? http://thequietus.com/articles/22436-recording-studios-sexism-music-industriy

This Is How Women Are Routinely Demoralized by the Music Industry…
From what I can see, there are three main roles that women are allowed to fill in modern pop music. Each of them restrictive for both artists and audience. They are mainly portrayed through the medium of the music video, you’ll find them very familiar. I call them One of the Girls’ Girls, the Victim/Torch Singer, and the Unattainable Sexbot. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/10/15/church

Infuriating Things People Say to Women Musicians | by Steph Guthrie
A few weeks ago I asked women musicians on Twitter and Facebook for all the silly things folks have said to them, and/or any silly things they’ve observed folks saying to women musicians. It sparked a lot of maddening responses. http://freshwaterevents.com/node/34

A Professional’s Perspective On Sexism In The Music Industry I’ve been called a whore, a tease, a groupie, a sycophant and everything in between. That sh*t is not ok, but I’m guessing none of it is news for any woman who works in a male-dominated field. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacie-huckeba/a-professionals-perspective-on-sexism-in-the-music-industry_b_10762200.html