The Music Industry Remains Unequal — Here’s One Way To Change That
The last several years have shed much needed light on the gender iniquity that has long infected the music industry. This is something I’ve been personally encouraged to see, as an independent recording artist vying to “break in.” Yet as far as actually creating a more equal and accessible reality for female musicians such as myself, the industry has a long, long way to go.
As the producer, DJ, fellow artist and frequent collaborator of mine Ali Stone put it recently, “Ser mujer es ser guerrera y vencer los límites y estereotipos que la sociedad nos impone” — or,
“Being a woman [in music] is being a warrior that overcomes the stereotypes and obstacles/limits that society has imposed on us.”
And those obstacles remain serious. In 2019, an investigative report conducted by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative revealed that across the entire music industry, women make up just 21.7 percent of artists, 12.3 percent of songwriters and 2.1 percent of producers. The ratio of male producers to female producers is 47-to-1. Only 4 out of 871 producers, meanwhile, are women of color. Of the 75 female songwriters and producers that the authors interviewed during their research, 43 percent reported not being taken seriously by their male colleagues, as well as having their abilities, competence, and skill as a songwriter or producer doubted or undercut. 39 percent, meanwhile, reported having experienced stereotyping and sexualization.
The repercussions of this systemic iniquity and underrepresentation are varied. On the one hand, it amounts to self-inflicted damage. We know, for example, that broadly speaking, as articulated by the World Economic Forum, inequality has “negative effects on cohesion…” and is a “serious threat to economic growth.”
Those obstacles — along with the mental repercussions of coming face to face with them — are things both Ali and I have been working together to overcome.
One way we’ve tackled this is through a collaborative creative effort in partnership with World Mental Health Day that we began dreaming up last year, when we met through an organization called NEXUS. We were both making music at the time — Ali eventually wound up producing a number of my singles — and we were both familiar with the unique challenges imposed upon us because of our gender. We were both familiar, too, with the challenge of battling for your own mental health: how, both in the business world and also in the music industry, mental health remains an under-researched and taboo subject. Any struggles one has with depression, anxiety, or the like are expected to be swept under the rug, especially for women who are far more likely to be labeled as “hysterical” or “over-reactive” when any depth of emotion is on display. We were eager to use our music and our work to address all of these issues, and exactly one year later, we were presented with an opportunity that did just that.
The result was the original song we co-executive produced, co-wrote, and performed on together, along with 6 other artists from around the world, for Speak Your Mind and United For Global Mental Health’s campaign for World Mental Health Day. The beauty of the project was that the rest of the leadership team was also predominantly female — from our fellow producers, executive producers, and writers (roles that rarely go to women), to Elisha London, Founder of United for Global Mental Health and Jett Galindo, the song’s Mastering Engineer. Of the 8 total artists involved on the song, 6 are women, and we tapped Morgan Choice, a talented Australian modern dancer who has worked with the likes of Taylor Swift, Kylie Minogue, Ricky Martin, and Jessie J, to create a signature move for TikTok’s dance challenge.
The experience has taught both Ali and I much about what’s possible in creating a more inclusive and conscious music industry. It also showed me that it’s quite prudent to tap women to lead these kinds of projects. Women prove uniquely adept at adapting to adversity and collaborating across differences in working styles to, quite frankly, get shit done. We often think of prototypically “alpha” characteristics as being more conducive to such an end, but in truth it’s traits like empathy, patience, the ability to work as a team, and possessing the willingness and creativity to adapt that prove more valuable in accomplishing big goals — and to do so often, I find, with less collateral damage.
It also reiterated in my mind the moral imperative of all this. As it stands in music today, being a woman qualifies as a barrier to success, a thing that has to be overcome, which is as nonsensical as it is insidious.
Now, we as women need to be conscious of the challenges we face, and do everything in our power to focus on hiring and lifting up other female artists around us. When I returned to my music career and began working on new material, I purposely sought to collaborate with a female producer. It wasn’t easy but eventually I found Ali, and she has helped bring my sound and my career to an entirely new level. And on Ali’s part, though she had disproportionately stronger credentials under her belt having worked with artists as big as Mary J. Blige and Jennifer Lopez, she took a chance on an unknown artist because she believed in my songs and had a desire to support other women in this business. As a result, not only has the working relationship benefitted the both of us, but we have developed a friendship that makes it all that much more rewarding. We, as women, need to live by the motto that we are not in competition with each other, but instead are more successful when other women find their success too. While men in positions of power need to help open the doors, we as women need to grab the hands of all of our sisters as we enter the room.
At the same time, the onus is hardly just on us. All appreciators of music, industry stakeholders, and members of society in general have to continue asking themselves this question: what do we need to do to make change?
One idea: we should create and support environments where aspiring female musicians and producers feel welcome and supported to grow.
Right now, whenever someone like me or Ali enters a recording studio, meets with label executives, or discusses options for distribution of her music, we often find ourselves working with or pitching people who — inadvertently or otherwise — either don’t empathize with our perspectives or, worse, possess implicit personal biases. At best, women in this situation are made to feel isolated, like they’re fighting an uphill battle by themselves. Much of the time, they’re discouraged and discredited altogether.
What we need instead is to cultivate spaces where women feel encouraged to advocate for themselves and develop their talents without feeling like if they fail once, they’ll be blackballed. Such environments would serve to create communities wherein women can help each other — building relationships, finding mentors, collaborating, cross-promoting content, utilizing resources — such that they can begin opening their own doors, creating their own production companies, and truly lifting each other up.
These sorts of communities also encourage women to go into music production in the first place. As Eden Arielle Gordon wrote last year for Popdust, women “need to be playing their own instruments, working their own sound systems, and signing artists to their own labels.” Community, support, collective elevation: these things would serve to manifest such a reality — equality translating into empowerment.
The good news is, there are a variety of organizations already engaged in precisely this work. See, for example, places like Gender Amplified, She Is The Music, and Spotify’s EQL Residency Program, among others. And so, in addition to laying the groundwork for more people to create these kinds of environments and organizations, we must ardently support those who are already leading the way.
Moreover, we must celebrate the variety of female producers, artists, and music entrepreneurs who’ve contributed to music culture over the years, often unnoticed, such that we increase our collective awareness and appreciation of them.
As Ebonie Smith, founder of Gender Amplified, wrote in Billboard two years ago, producers such as WondaGurl, or Nova Wav — both of whom have won Grammys and collaborated with the likes of Jay-Z — should be just as well-known as their male peers.
Celebrating women who are bravely and boldly blazing trails, as it were, makes a difference, generating a palpable and undeniable momentum. Smith puts it best:
“Why are they not receiving the same recognition for their contributions as their male peers? One reason is that many women producers do not always receive the full public support of the artists they produce. Pharrell Williams’s public endorsement of Maggie Rogers in 2016 resulted in instant virality and acclaim when he praised her work at a student seminar hosted by the Clive Davis Institute at NYU.”
In other words, recognition, support, enthusiasm, respect — these things do more than encourage. They enable.
At the end of the day, this is an end we all must commit to.
Equality is not a one-sided campaign. Elevating the historically underrepresented is both a societal imperative and a necessarily collaborative undertaking. And of course more needs to be done than what I’ve suggested above. Education, mentorships, and a continual battle against pernicious discrimination are all part of the equation.
But support, celebration, community: these things constitute, in my mind, something of a starting point. And the beautiful thing is, prioritizing them will help do things like de-stigmatize efforts to cultivate greater mental health. The truth is this: We need more women in music. We need more women in leadership. We need them in government, in the nonprofit world, in engineering, in business. We need them in the boardroom and in every room where decisions get made. Women remain underrepresented and as long as this is the case, society will always be off balance. Let all of us, moving forward, transmit our awareness of this, along with our energy, into action, not just on International Women’s Day, but every day of the year.
