You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
1.5.14Male Dominance of the Music Industry: Roots in Runaway Sexual Selection
In Darwin’s sexual selection theory, males write and perform songs to impress females, ultimately for purposes of acquiring women to mate with. Musicianship in males tends to skyrocket after puberty, crests in young adulthood, and declines after marriage.
A male musician is not usually aware that his love of music-making probably stems from an inherently male competitive inclination to impress choosy females with a flashy display, like a peacock, that indicates survival and reproductive fitness. If runaway sexual selection began to shape the evolution of music one or two million years ago, the positive feedback loop would take the form of increasing demands for more impressive displays of musical talent, triggering ever greater cognitive functions, resulting in ever-swelling brain size. The theory would predict that, by now, a lopsided sex imbalance favouring male musicians would exist, regardless of musical genre, regardless of nation, regardless of culture.
And that’s precisely what’s observed.
For example, one analysis of samples from more than 7,000 albums (rock, jazz, classical) revealed that the overwhelming majority of the principal music makers (more than 90%) were male, regardless of musical genre.
The fact of pan-cultural male dominance of music gets little media attention. Yet flip through any magazine devoted to music, and you’ll find that the great majority of composers, songwriters, and performers are male. It’s like flipping though the sports pages of any newspaper, and for similar reasons that have roots in the evolutionary history of hominids.