Gender and Representation in the Music Industry – Connecting Research and Practice

Whilst women are making positive strides towards equality in the music industry, the recording industry is still male dominated with 77% of students obtaining a degree in recording technology being male (NCES, 2022) and 96.8% songs in the charts being produced by men (Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, 2024). Women in the recorded music sector struggle finding pathways into industry and garnering the same recognition as their male peers (Wong, 2023). An overwhelming number of women cite the existence of a ‘boys club’ (Leonard, 2016; Reddington, 2021; Women and Equalities Committee, 2024) as one of the leading factors that hinder their success. Building on past research (Cullen and Perez-Truglia, 2019; Smith & Genier, 1982; Seabright & Lalanne, 2011) I propose the term ‘male to male peer networks’ to explain how men working in the recorded music industry interact, hire and share recording practices and techniques. These networks can offer us an insight into the lack of gender parity in the recorded music sector, and wider industry in general. This paper will also consider how the introduction of cheap home recording set ups and women only training programmes (Goodwin, 2024) have allowed women to engage in the sector without participation in the dominant male peer network, however this also arguably excludes them from professional studio environments, skill sharing and limits their career progression. This paper concludes that male to male peer networks create barriers for participation for women in the recorded music industry.

References:

Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. (2024) Inclusion in the Recording Studio? Gender & Race/Ethnicity of Artists, Songwriters & Producers across 1,200 Popular Songs from 2012 to 2023. Available (Online) https://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-inclusion-recording-studio-20240130.pdf (accessed 29th June 2024)

Cullen, Z.B. (2023) ‘The Old Boys’ Club: Schmoozing and the Gender Gap’, The American economic review, 113(7), pp. 1703–1740.

Leonard, M. (2016) ‘Girls at Work: Gendered Identities, Sex Segregation, and Employment Experiences in the Music Industries’, in Voicing Girlhood in Popular Music. 1st edn. Routledge, pp. 37–55.

Goodwin, G. (2024) GENIE (Gender Equality Networks in Europe). Available (online) www.geniedatabase.com. Accessed: 29th October 2024.

NCES. (2022) Table 318.30.Bachelor’s, master’s, and doctor’s degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by sex of student and field of study: Academic year 2021-22. Available (online) https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_318.30.asp. Accessed 25th October 2024.

Reddington, H. (2021) She’s at the controls: sound engineering, production and gender ventriloquism in the 21st century. Bristol: Equinox Publishing Ltd.

Seabright, P. and Lalanne, M. (2011) ‘The Old Boy Network: Gender Differences in the Impact of Social Networks on Remuneration in Top Executive Jobs’, (8623).

Smith, H. and Grenier, M. (1982) ‘Sources of organizational power for women: Overcoming structural obstacles’, Sex roles, 8(7), pp. 733–746

Women and Equalities Committee. (2024) Misogyny in Music Report. Available (online) https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5804/cmselect/cmwomeq/129/report.html (accessed 20th June 2024)

Wong, D. (2023) Does Gender Matter? Gendered Relations in the Recording Studios. PhD Thesis. City University of New York.

Grace Goodwin is a PhD researcher at the University of Liverpool where her work focuses on regional gender inequalities in the music industry. She is a gender equality activist who delivers projects and talks and launched GENIE (Gender Equality Networks in Europe), a database of over 400 projects supporting gender equity in the music industry. She is an artist mentor, session drummer and also sits on the board of the PRS Foundation who are the largest funders of new music in the UK.

This paper presents the outcomes of a ten-year analysis of gender representation in the German Top 100 Charts, treating the chart as a digital cultural archive that reflects dominant industry hierarchies and the marginalisation of gender-diverse creators. The study examines the roles of women and gender non-conforming individuals in songwriting, production, and performance from 2014 to 2024 building on earlier frameworks established by Bain (2019), Malisa Stiftung (2022) and Smith et al., (2024), while developing new, data-driven methodologies.

Through web scraping and large-scale data analysis, this project constructs a searchable, structured archive of popular music releases across a decade. At the core of the analysis is a pronoun-based self-identification method that centres artists’ own expressions of gender rather than assigning categories externally. This approach challenges the binary logic that has shaped previous music industry research and contributes to what Eichhorn (2013) terms the archival turn in feminism: reclaiming agency through the structuring of knowledge.

A key focus of the research is the distinction between presence and prominence, a framework adapted from the work of Lafrance, Worcester and Burns (2011) on the Billboard charts. It examines not just how often women and gender-diverse individuals appear, but also the roles they occupy and the visibility of their contributions. This is complemented by an analysis of gender dynamics within mixed-gender collaborations, informed by Sánchez-Olmos’ (2025) recent work on the Spanish charts.

By treating the chart itself as an evolving and contested cultural archive, this research critically engages with the construction of musical canons, the politics of visibility, and the role of digital archives in feminist and queer music sociology. It offers both an empirical contribution and a methodological reflection on how digital tools can reframe our understanding of marginalised labour in the music industry.

References:

Bain, V. (2019) Counting the music industry: The gender gap. Available at: https://www.ukmusic.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Counting-the-Music-Industry-full-report-2019.pdf (Accessed: 11 April 2024).

Eichhorn, K. (2013). The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order. Temple University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14bsx7w

Lafrance, M., Worcester L., Burns L. (2011) Gender and the Billboard Top 40 Charts between 1997 and 2007, Popular Music and Society, 34:5, 557-570, DOI: 10.1080/03007766.2010.522827

Malisa Recherche, Music S Women* and GEMA (2022) Gender in music – charts, works and festival stages, Malisa Stiftung. Available at: https://malisastiftung.org/en/gender-in-music/ (Accessed: 11 April 2024).

Sánchez-Olmos, C. (2025) Gender Inequality in Spain’s Official Music Charts: Neither Representation nor Success for Female Artists (2008–2020). University of Alicante.

Smith, Stacy, Katherine Pieper, Karla Hernandez, and Sam Wheeler. 2024. “Inclusion in the Recording Studio?” https://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-inclusion-recording-studio-20240130.pdf.

Nina Himmelreich is a PhD researcher at the Institute for Popular Music at the University of Liverpool. Her research explores gender inequality in the German music industry, focusing on gender representation in music charts and festival line-ups. Adopting a queer feminist and intersectional framework, her work was featured in the 2024 Keychange Report. Nina is a lecturer in music industries and cultural theory and is a researcher on the Live Music Mapping Project, which informs cultural policy and supports sector development through evidence-based mapping and analysis. Nina is also the co-founder of MusicSeen CIC, a Liverpool-based initiative that documents and amplifies the local music scene through data-driven tools, artist directories, and events. She also hosts Plattenschatz im Schattenplatz, a radio show focused on underrepresented voices in music. Her practice centres on the belief that research, advocacy, and education must be closely linked to effect structural change.