Women in music

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16 Feb 2024

Women in music

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American jazz singer and songwriter Billie Holiday in New York City in 1947 Bonnie Raitt is an American singer, guitar player and piano player. A winner of ten Grammy awards, she is also noted for her slide guitar playing.Asha Bhosle is an Indian singer best known as a playback singer in Hindi cinema. In 2011, she was officially acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most-recorded artist in music history.[1]Part of a series onWomen in societyshow

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Women in music include women as composers, songwriters, instrumental performers, singers, conductors, music scholars, music educators, music critics/music journalists, and in other musical professions. Also, it describes music movements (e.g., women's music, which is music written and performed by women for women), events and genres related to women, women's issues, and feminism.
In the 2010s, while women constituted a significant proportion of popular music and classical music singers, and a significant proportion of songwriters (many of them being singer-songwriters), there were few women record producers, rock critics, or rock instrumentalists. Women artists in pop music, such as Björk, Lady Gaga and Madonna, have commented about sexism in the music industry.[2][3][4] Additionally, a 2021 study led by Dr. Smith announced that "...over the last six years, the representation of women in the music industry has been even lower."[5][6] In classical music, although there have been a huge number of women composers from the Medieval period to the present day, women composers are significantly underrepresented in the commonly performed classical music repertoire, music history textbooks, and music encyclopedias. For example, in the Concise Oxford History of Music, Clara Schumann is one of the only female composers who is mentioned.
Women constitute a significant proportion of instrumental soloists in classical music and the percentage of women in orchestras is increasing. A 2015 article on concerto soloists in major Canadian orchestras, however, indicated that 84% of the soloists with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal were men. In 2012, women still made up just 6% of the top-ranked Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. Women are less common as instrumental players in popular music genres such as rock and heavy metal, although there have been various female instrumentalists and all-female bands. Women are particularly underrepresented in extreme metal genres.[7]: 103 Women are also underrepresented in orchestral conducting, music criticism/music journalism, music producing, and sound engineering. While women were discouraged from composing in the 19th century, and there were few women musicologists, women became involved in music education "to such a degree that women dominated [this field] during the later half of the 19th century and well into the 20th century."[8]
According to Jessica Duchen, a music writer for London's The Independent, women musicians in classical music are "too often judged for their appearances, rather than their talent" and they face pressure "to look sexy onstage and in photos."[9] Duchen states that while "[t]here are women musicians who refuse to play on their looks...the ones who do tend to be more materially successful."[9] According to the UK's Radio 3 editor, Edwina Wolstencroft, the music industry has long been open to having women in performance or entertainment roles, but women are much less likely to have positions of authority, such as being the conductor of an orchestra,[10] a profession which has been called "one of the last glass ceilings in the music industry."[11] In popular music, while there are many women singers recording songs, there are very few women behind the audio console acting as music producers, the individuals who direct and manage the recording process.[12] One of the most recorded artists is a woman, Asha Bhosle, an Indian singer who is best known as a playback singer in Hindi cinema.[1]

Glass ceiling in the music industry[edit]

The lack of women in the top executive roles in the music industry, in labels, publishers, and artist management has been brought out in multiple research studies and news articles. The industry itself recognized the issue decades ago but little has changed.
In 1982, Cosmopolitan published an article interviewing and profiling six women executives, Women in the Business side of the Music Business, which found that, "For the first time, women are pioneering in the zany competitive, and very lucrative pop-record industry...."[13][14] Only a few women executives were included in the chapter about women in the business side of the music industry in the encyclopedic book, She Bop: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul, which primarily focused on women musicians and vocalists.
The New York Times reported in an article titled "For Women in Music, Equality Remains Out of Reach", from 8 March 2021, "Three years ago, an academic tallied the performers, producers and songwriters behind hit songs, and found that women's representation fell on a scale between, roughly, poor and abysmal."[15][16]
Despite the gains in the 1970s and 1980s, the lack of women senior executives in the music business is still an issue today.[17] According to a 2021 Annenberg study, "...across 70 major and independent music companies...13.9% were women."[18] Women fare far better outside the music industry; according to a 2021 report by U.S. News & World Report, "Women held 31.7% of top executive positions across all industries…"[19]

Songwriters[edit]

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[l]ike most aspects of the... music business [in the 1960s], songwriting was a male-dominated field. Though there were plenty of female singers on the radio, women... were primarily seen as consumers:... Singing was sometimes an acceptable pastime for a girl, but playing an instrument, writing songs, or producing records simply wasn't done... [and women] were not socialized to see themselves as people who create [music].

Erika Abrams in Rebeat, 28 January 2015
A songwriter is an individual who writes the lyrics, melodies, and chord progressions for songs, typically for a popular music genre such as pop, rock, or country music. A songwriter can also be called a composer, although the latter term tends to be mainly used for individuals from the classical music genre.
A cowriter can help a songwriter balance out their own strengths and shortcomings by specializing in a particular area, such as lyrics or arranging. Many of the Top 40 songs that are consistently heard on streaming sites like Spotify or Pandora are written by seasoned songwriters who then provide their tune to top-tier talent for recording. Not all songwriters are singers.
Carole King is considered one of the greatest songwriters of all time. She used to write songs for other music artists before becoming a recording artist.
Even if the writers of long-forgotten children's songs have been lost to time, every jingle and tune remembered from childhood has an original composer. Opera, liturgical music, and musicals all fit this description. Songwriters play a key role whenever lyrics are put to a melody.
A musician who writes lyrics for songs or professionally writes musical compositions is known as a songwriter. Although this term is typically only used in the context of classical music and cinema scoring, the person who writes the music for a song might be referred to as a composer. A lyricist is a songwriter who primarily creates the lyrics for a song. Songwriting is frequently a task that is divided among several persons due to the demand from the music industry to create successful tunes.
Taylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, who is often the youngest on lists that rank the greatest songwriters.
The following songwriters are listed in Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. Many of these individuals are singer-songwriters who also famous for their singing and/or instrumental performance skills, but they are listed here for their accomplishments in songwriting:[20]

19th century-early 20th century[edit]

"Only a few of the many women [songwriters] in America had their music published and heard during the late 19th and early 20th centuries."[8] According to Richard A. Reublin and Richard G. Beil, the "lack of mention of women [songwriters] is a glaring and embarrassing omission in our musical heritage."[8] Women "struggled to write and publish music in the man's world of the 20th century Tin Pan Alley."[8] Before 1900 and even after, it was expected that "women would perform music, not make music."[8] In 1880, Chicago music critic George P. Upton wrote the book Women in Music, in which he argued that "women lacked the innate creativity to compose good music" due to the "biological predisposition" of women.[8] Later, it was accepted that women would have a role in music education, and they became involved in this field "to such a degree that women dominated music education during the later half of the 19th century and well into the 20th century."[8] As part of women's role in music education, women wrote hymns and children's music. The "secular music in print in America before 1825 shows only about 70 works by women."[8] In the mid-19th century, women songwriters emerged, including Faustina Hasse Hodges, Susan Parkhurst, Augusta Browne and Marion Dix Sullivan. By 1900, there were many more women songwriters, but "many were still forced to use pseudonyms or initials" to hide the fact that they were women.[8]
Carrie Jacobs-Bond was the "preeminent woman composer of the late 1800s and well into the middle of the twentieth century... [making her] the first million-selling woman" songwriter.[8] Maude Nugent (1877–1958) wrote "Sweet Rosie O'Grady" in 1896. She also penned "Down at Rosie Reilly's Flat", "My Irish Daisy" and "Mary From Tipperary".[8] Charlotte Blake (1885–1979) was a staff writer for the Whitney Warner Publishing Co., in Detroit, Michigan. Initially, the company billed her as "C. Blake" to hide her gender, but by 1906 ads used her full name.[8] Caro Roma (1866–1937) was the gender-ambiguous pseudonym for Carrie Northly. She was "one of America's more well known and popular composers of the Tin Pan Alley era."[8] Her songs include "Can't Yo' Heah Me Calling", "Faded Rose", "The Angelus", "Thinking of Thee" and "Resignation."[8] About 95% of the songwriters in British music hall during the early 1900s were men; however, about 30% of the singers were women.[21]