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Why Even a Few Women At The Top Feels Like ‘Too Many’
On gender perception bias and its damaging consequences
Many of the headlines following last week’s Grammy Awards claimed it’s women who dominated the night.
From Beyoncé finally clinching Album of the Year with Cowboy Carter to Doechii becoming the third woman ever to win Best Rap Album and Chappell Roan winning her first Grammy for Best New Artist, it perhaps did feel like it. But feelings don’t always reflect reality.
According to a new report from consultancy AKAS, titled Missing Voices of Women in Music and Music News, women accounted for just 28% of this year’s Grammy nominees, while men made up 69%. Ultimately, men took home 61% of all wins across the 94 categories.
The AKAS report also found that this disparity between media coverage of female artists’ success and the reality has been quite persistent. Over the past eight years — from 2017 to 2024 — women have received only one in five Grammy nominations and wins. And although there’s been some progress — in 2017, only 12% of wins went to women — the Grammys are still pretty male-dominated. Yet the media seems largely oblivious to this. In 2024, for example, around a quarter of female-related Grammy headlines included words like ‘dominate’ and ‘rule.’ Similar language appeared in…
