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Women Musicians and Gender Inequality In the Music Industry
Check out your own collection of recordings. Count the musicians by sex—not just the act’s headliner, but all the musicians who play on each recording. (More often than not, a female star will have an all-male or mostly-male backing band, and will co-write her songs with male songwriters.) You’ll likely find that the overwhelming majority of songwriters, vocalists, and instrumentalists in your own music collection are male, unless you make a point of deliberately searching out and collecting music composed and performed by women only.
Apart from your own collection, another sample worth checking out for male-female proportions is the Gold Standard Song List (www.GoldStandardSongList.com), which lists 5,000 songs written over a 100-year period, spanning 14 genres.
All of the above notwithstanding ... just because far fewer women than menbecome career musicians, that does not mean women ought not to have a career in music. If you’re a woman, and you write and/or perform music, you may well have heard some variant of the naturalistic fallacy with respect to women and music: if it’s found in nature (i.e., more men than women make a living in music), then that’s the way it ought to be. Rubbish. There’s no logical connection between “is” and “ought,” which is why it’s called the naturalistic fallacy. Sadly, in some cultures, adherence to the naturalistic fallacy prevents women who want a music career from having it.
Although the evidence clearly indicates males have a stronger drive than females to become musicians, males do not become better musicians than females who become musicians. Musical ambition does not equate with inherent musical ability.