The term gender gap has been used for years to describe, broadly speaking, a difference between men and women that can be applied across various fields and that has repercussions on economic and social conditions. Until very recently, gender diversity was discussed primarily in the context of STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

Only in recent years, partly as a result of the Weinstein scandal and the birth of the #MeToo movement, have people begun to talk about gender equality in fields where the differences are perhaps less obvious, yet even more insidious and deep-rooted — such as entertainment, film and music.

Women in the music world: the numbers

At the beginning of 2018, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California, the world's leading think tank studying diversity and inclusion in entertainment, published a study analysing the state of the US music industry.

The analysis examined six hundred pop songs released on the market between 2012 and 2017, and highlighted how 2017 marked a six-year low for the presence of tracks by female artists, who accounted for 16.8% compared to 83.2% for male artists.

These figures referred to performers and interpreters. But the presence of women was even lower when songwriting was analysed, and became alarming when it came to production: of the 2,767 credited songwriters, only 12.3% were female, and of the more than six hundred producers examined, 98% were male and only 2% were female.

In Italy the situation is certainly no better. A Nuovoimaie study found that the percentage of female performers in the 18–34 age group is 12.52%, in line with the figure in the United States.

Artists speak out about the gender gap in music

The list of artists who have spoken out about this gap is quite long: from Madonna and Beyoncé, from Kesha to Lady Gaga, from St. Vincent to Dua Lipa.

At the forefront is certainly Björk, who has on more than one occasion made statements about the sexism that runs rampant in the recording industry. In 2016 the Icelandic singer wrote an open letter addressed to journalists, accusing them of writing and speaking about music only through gender stereotypes: "Men are allowed to roam from one field to another (…) but not women. Women in music are allowed to be singer-songwriters who only talk about their boyfriends. If they choose another subject (…) or to become anything other than performers who sing about their love lives, they receive criticism… as if our only means of expression were emotionality."

Another artist who has long given voice to the feminist world and championed important initiatives on gender equality is St. Vincent, singer-songwriter, musician, producer and director. In 2014 she received the first Alternative Grammy won by a woman in 20 years and, among other things, in 2016 she designed the first electric guitar for women, stating: "Guitars like the Fender Stratocaster or the Gibson Les Paul are great guitars, but because of their weight they are impractical and not very functional for someone like me" — highlighting how the male gaze still pervades the music world.

More recently, St. Vincent duetted with singer Dua Lipa at the 2019 Grammy Awards ceremony, at which Dua Lipa collected the coveted Best New Artist prize, saying: "It's an honour to be nominated alongside so many women: I think this year we really stepped up" — at one of the editions that saw the highest number of women winners ever.

The gender pay gap in the music world

One of the most widely discussed topics of recent times is undoubtedly the gender pay gap, meaning the difference between a woman's salary and that of a male colleague.

Naturally, the music industry could not buck the trend that sees women underpaid. In the United Kingdom, for example, since 2017 companies with two hundred and fifty or more employees have been required by law to publish their pay gaps.

Following the new regulation, the UK offices of the music industry's major labels offered a glaring illustration of the difference in economic treatment between men and women. As revealed by Music Business Worldwide, the salary gap is quite striking: women are paid on average 33.8% less — 29.8% less at Universal, 22.7% less at Sony and 49% less at Warner — and this is without taking into account that the numbers of women working at the labels are very low: at Universal female employees account for 30%, at Sony 36.7% and at Warner 26%.

The presence of women at festivals

The lack of female names in the line-ups of international music festivals has also long been a cause for complaint.

A study published by the feminist music network Female:Pressure in 2017 highlighted that the presence of women at festivals is very low: female artists represented only 15.7% at many of the major alternative mixed music and electronic music festivals.

Telling was the experiment by musician Lily Allen, who published the Wireless festival poster with all the male artists' names blacked out. The result is startling, with only four female artists remaining on the bill.

The Australian Instagram account @lineupswithoutmales also publishes music festival posters from across the country with the male artists' names removed, and some (such as this one) are truly telling. And if the same experiment is replicated in Italy, the situation is absolutely unchanged. A curious fact is that the low presence of female artists at festivals is entirely at odds with women's presence in the audience: according to 2015 Nielsen data, attendance at music festivals in the United States alone was approaching thirty-two million, and 51% of that audience was female.

Women in the music world: far from management positions

Returning to the original Annenberg Inclusion Initiative research, perhaps the focal point of the study and the figure that needs to be examined in depth is the one concerning the low presence of female producers. It is widely assumed that women are largely present in the music industry because they frequently top international charts. But when the data are analysed, the reality is that the female gender is not expected to occupy any role other than this one: women are not songwriters, composers or producers, and they hold decision-making positions even less.

Dr Stacy L. Smith, filmmaker and founder of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, in an interview with Billboard regarding the study conducted, also drew attention to another important piece of data. She said she had discovered that nearly a fifth of all the songs in the sample analysed had been written solely by nine songwriters. A striking finding, because it means that nine men are setting the entire agenda for music consumption in the United States.

Initiatives to encourage women to make music

For years now, attitudinal explanations have no longer been cited to account for the small number of women in certain fields, yet the lack of female role models, including in leadership roles and positions, remains one of the main reasons. That is why the many initiatives being put in place around the world to encourage girls to make music are so important.

Girls rock camp

This is an organisation founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2001, which now has more than eighty members who organise annual music camps for girls around the world. Girls rock camp was created with the aim of "amplifying the voices that have otherwise been told to be silent". Music, art and creative expression are the tools used to build the entire movement, and the ultimate purpose of the workshops is to boost participants' self-esteem and help them carve out a space in a male-dominated industry. Among Girls rock camp's ambassadors is Shirley Mason, singer of Garbage, while the 2019 Irish edition was sponsored by the band Chvrches, who donated one euro for every ticket sold at the Dublin concert.

She Said

shesaid.so is a support community for women working in the music industry, helping them to overcome gender stereotypes. It is a genuine mutual aid network with thousands of members around the world. London, New York, San Francisco, Barcelona, Paris, Mumbai and many other cities, including Italian ones: the Italian branch has nearly a thousand members in the Facebook group.

Keychange

A campaign supported by the Creative European Programme of the European Union. Thanks to the initiative, forty-five festivals around the world (including The Great Escape in Brighton, Iceland Airwaves, Canadian Music Week and the Irish Hard Working Class Heroes) have committed to achieving a 50:50 ratio of men and women in their line-ups by 2022. The initiative's most striking success story is undoubtedly Barcelona Primavera Sound, which had already reached that goal by its 2019 edition, stating: "If half our audience is female, why shouldn't half our line-up be?".

Hit like a girl

Hit like a girl is a contest to encourage girls to play the drums, regardless of age or ability. The competition, which reached its eighth edition in 2019, was conceived by David Levine, an expert and marketing consultant in the world of percussion, and has become a global phenomenon with participants from more than fifty countries and numerous categories.

Women's audio mission

Women's audio mission is a non-profit organisation based in San Francisco that uses music to attract more than two thousand women and girls each year towards the study of scientific disciplines through an in-depth exploration of creative technology tools. The organisation boasts the world's largest recording studio run entirely by women, and its primary goal is to close the gender gap in music by interweaving art and science, technology and art.

Always on

The 2018 edition of Moogfest, the major music, art and technology festival in North Carolina, hosted Always on: a 50-hour livestream featuring continuous performances by women, transgender and queer artists. As stated by DJ and curator Kaltès, the initiative was primarily intended to bring an important issue in the world of music festivals to light, and was certainly not meant to be a definitive solution: a way of giving a voice to those artists who too often do not take part in international events of this scale.

The future of women in music

The gap between men and women therefore remains considerable in the music world too. Some of the barriers that in the past prevented women from entering the recording industry are being broken down, albeit very slowly, providing girls with more role models to look up to, transforming the rules within music professions, and inspiring and encouraging younger girls not only to pick up a guitar or join a band, but also to believe they can take on managerial roles without losing their own identity.