Report: females drastically under-represented in 600 most popular songs and in Grammy nominations

Diversity may have been the buzz word at the weekend’s Grammys. But the music industry was brought back to earth with some sobering figures released by a new report from the United States.

The first-of-its-kind report Inclusion in the Recording Studio? examined gender and race/ethnicity of artists and content creators across 600 popular songs on the Billboard Hot 100 year-end charts from 2012 to 2017.

Only 22.4% of performers were female. Moreover, 2017 was a six-year low with females comprising just 16.8% of popular artists on the top charts.

Across all years, women are more likely to receive credit as solo artists and rarely appear in duos or bands.

Inclusion in the Recording Studio? is the first from Prof. Stacy L. Smith and the USC (University of Southern California) Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

“The voices of women are missing from popular music,” Prof. Smith said.

“This is another example of what we see across the ecosystem of entertainment: women are pushed to the margins or excluded from the creative process.”

The figures are more dismal for creative women working behind-the-scenes.

Of 2,767 songwriters credited on the 600 songs, 87.7% were male and 12.3% were female.

Out of 651 producers, 98% were male and only 2% female. That’s a gender ratio of 49 males to every one female.

“Women are rarely credited as the creative force behind popular music,” Prof. Smith added.

“The lack of female songwriters and producers means that the epidemic of invisibility we have catalogued for women in key creative roles in film and television extends to music.

“These agenda-setting songs are like so many other forms of entertainment—reflective of a largely male perspective.”

Inclusion in the Recording Studio? also explored the percentage of artists from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups working as artists.

Here, the music industry reached proportional representation with the U.S. population, as 42% of artists were from underrepresented groups across six years and 600 popular songs.

Among female songwriters, 40.2% were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups.

Among female producers, only two (yes, two) women of colour in the last six years produced popular songs.

Clearly the way to address the situation is to change the public perception of what (or who) makes a leader, which in turns seeps through to who is considered a creative leader.

Also to be changed is the perception within the music industry that the definition of a producer means a male producer.

Females are more like to write or perform in the pop genre than their male counterparts.

That is, the report said, was because female artists prefer to have their songs written by a female composer.

But 65% of the relevant songs in the survey were written by the artists. Only 35.2% of female-performed songs were written by or with a non-performing female writer.

“Female and male artists both have opportunities to advocate for their female songwriting colleagues,” said Prof. Smith.

“Becoming more inclusive means that everyone takes steps and makes different choices to bring new voices and different perspectives to the table.”

Nine top male writers wrote between 13 and 36 of the 600 ongs surveyed, or 20%. Nine top female writers created 6—15.

The report also examined six years of Grammy nominations in five categories.

90.7% were male and 9.3% were female.

Not one woman has been nominated for Producer of the Year since 2013. Women were most likely to be nominated for Song of the Year or Best New Artist.

Fewer than 10% of nominees for Record or Album of the Year were female.

Roughly a third (31%) of the female nominees at the previous six Grammys were women from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups.

Despite the bleakness of these figures, Prof. Smith says the music industry is doing a better job of diversity than America’s film and TV industries.