The Truth To Our Progress
Often when looking into the progress of women, we like to sit proudly to say “look how far we’ve come”, however, how far have we really come and have we even reached a point of equal stature to men in the music industry?
Having delved into the statistical analysis behind this in my studying years, I was awakened to the fact that – actually – we have not come all that far and in fact it felt more of an illusion to think that we have developed within the music sector even half as much as we have in our daily lives.
To give some in sight: an analysis of “The Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart” covering the course of six years (from the beginning of 2012 to the end of 2017), showed that of the top 600 songs in this time frame there was still a huge gender imbalance; with 22.4% of 1,239 artists and only 12.3% of 2,767 songwriters involved being women; additionally, female producers only made up for for 2%. (Sisario, 2018)
In attempt to break these barriers, women have attempted to forge their own path, creating their own labels; with artists such as TT founding an ‘all girl label’ called “Club Queen Records”. TT explains that this is a necessary move when we live “in a society that tries to suppress women’s creativity, sexual freedom, narratives and identity”(Jackman, 2020).
Being a male dominated industry has meant that the value of a woman within the industry – most particularly the performance sector – has been determined by men. Men have determined whether a woman’s image, stage presence, character and even talent is suitable enough to be showcased as a ‘full package’ to the public eye: a woman’s worth has been based off of man’s opinion for centuries. And it is apparent that, to a certain extent, this is still the case today in our music scene.
Although the timeline of women within the music industry has displayed positive changes, it is clear that this is simply a reflection upon the development of gender equality within society. There is still not a display of equality on a statistical level, but rather in a woman’s ability to be held at an equal stature to men, while still standing under the most scrutiny and control within the music scene irrespective of fame.
There is still a long way to go for women in this industry and this should start with tackling the gender imbalance and encouraging women to become the decision makers within society in order to see any real change.
In Derby, Hear Me Now’s home town, it is powerful to see women owning venues and businesses in the creative sector, such as Donna Brisco-Greene (owner of The Maypole Bar and Theatre), and female DJ’s going up in the world, such as DJ Eza.
It is important that neither man nor woman see barriers to their success based upon their ‘status within society’ as it is up to us to determine where we set our ‘status’ and we shouldn’t allow anyone to set boundaries to the height of our successes.