Women are big business in music. With the likes of Lizzo, Ariana Grande, Halsey, Billie Eilish and Selina Gomez all hitting the number one spot in the Billboard top 100 this year, and Rihanna being named the wealthiest female musician with a net worth of $600 million, things are looking up for females in the industry, right?
Not exactly…
Last year, only 24% of Billboard’s Hot 100 songs were by women and a meagre 17% the year before that. Based on those stats alone you might be fooled into thinking that we’re heading in the right direction, but since 2007, there hasn’t been a single year in which women have represented more than 30% of the Hot 100 songs of the year.
These statistics are bad enough, but behind the scenes the story is even more shameful, with female contribution on some of the biggest albums over the past decade at a criminally low level.
For the purposes of this article, we’ll be taking a look at the following albums for their gender diversity:
Lizzo ‘Cuz I Love You’
Beyonce ‘Lemonade’
Janelle Monae ‘Dirty Computer’
Ed Sheeran ‘+’
Post Malone ‘Stoney’
Eminem ‘The Eminem Show’
Let’s start with feminist icon Post Malone, who comes in rock bottom with only 2% of contributors on his album ‘Stoney’ identifying as female. This gentleman has some lovely ideas about women, or as he lovingly calls them — bitches and hoes.
What’s utterly laughable is that Malone recently signed a pledge to expand opportunities for women in producing and engineering, despite the fact that he has never once allowed a woman to do anything except write lyrics and be a featured artist on any of his three albums. He’s never even let a woman play an instrument!
So, no surprise, Post Malone isn’t a feminist and doesn’t pretend to be either in or out of the studio (unless he’s signing a totally voluntary pledge that has absolutely no requirement to actually hire a woman.)
Next up, at a whopping 6%, Mr Feminism himself, Ed Sheeran.
Here he is, educating the world about how over 2.7 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. Oh really Ed? You know which jobs women can choose to do in both the UK and The US? Engineering, mixing, producing, mastering…the list goes on. And yet, of the 53 people working on your album ‘+’, only three were female, and none held any role other than composer, percussion and vocals. Perhaps you should have called those 2.7 billion women you were so concerned about and offered them a job.
Next, at 12%, it’s got to be Eminem right?
Wrong.
It is, in fact, feminist darling of the century, the one and only Beyonce. “We have to teach our girls that they can reach as high as humanly possible” and she’s not wrong, we do. But do you know how that happens? By hiring women. By showing them that they have as many opportunities as men.
Isn’t it worrying that in 2016 an artist like Beyonce had fewer women involved in the making of an album than Eminem did in 2000? This is a guy who writes lyrics like “Beat your bitch’s ass while your kids stare in silence” and pro-domestic violence anthems such as ‘Kim’. Perhaps we should be concerned about the women who choose to work with someone like him but there isn’t nearly enough time to get into that right now.
Arguably one of her most feminist tracks ‘Run The World (Girls)’ from her 2011 album had no other woman working on it aside from herself. What kind of message does that send to young girls? That they aren’t good enough to work with someone like Beyonce? That women aren’t as talented as men? Most importantly, it shows what we already know, that despite what she purports, men run the world.
She can, and will, do whatever she wants, she’s Beyonce. But it’s extremely dangerous for young girls to be taught this brand of feminism. It’s a selfish take that leads women and girls to believe that so long as they are doing well personally, then the plight of other females doesn’t matter.
Practice what you preach, if you’re a feminist, hire some women. If you don’t want to hire women, stop telling everyone how desperate you are to see equality. In fact, if Beyonce really wanted women to succeed, she’d want equity not equality, but again I really do not have time to get into this one.
With women making up 30% of her workforce and 37% of her engineers, Janelle Monae is head and shoulders above the rest. Lizzo is the only other artist on this list who considered that a woman might be able to engineer something. Beyonce had a massive 17 male engineers on Lemonade, and yet somehow couldn’t find one single woman as ‘talented’ as these men.
Across popular music only 2% of producers are women, and 3% in technical roles such as engineering and mixing. Without some big shifts in hiring practices and a dramatic reduction in stereotypical sexist attitudes, these numbers won’t be changing any time soon. If female artists themselves won’t even hire women, why should anyone else?
We know why men don’t employ women, sexist attitudes have been proven time and time again in the workplace and they legitimately don’t think women can do these jobs, it’s as simple as that. It doesn’t occur to them to go looking for one to hire because they have so many male options. Women, on the other hand should know better.
Are they so threatened by having other successful and talented women around that their own talent is at risk of being overshadowed? Do they prefer to be the only woman in the room? Do they still have no choice over who they hire, no matter how successful they are? Whatever the case, it continues to feed the narrative that jobs are somehow gendered, and that technical roles should be left to the men.
When Janelle Monae talks about feminism it’s believable, the statistics speak for themselves. When Beyonce talks about feminism, it’s difficult not to think of all the women she could have hired, but chose not to.
Why pretend to be a feminist when you can just be a feminist? It’s really not that difficult.
N.B No choirs, orchestras or ensembles were included in the contributors lists.
