Women might be leading the charts in our most popular music, but behind the scenes they remain “vastly underrepresented”.
A new study from the United States has found that women and non-binary people make up less than 5 per cent of the tech credits for the most streamed songs last year. Out of 3,781 credits from the 757 most popular songs surveyed, they claimed just 187 credits.
Referred to by its researchers from Howard University and Middle Tennessee State University as “the first major study of gender representation across all credited production and engineering personnel by role,” the study examined 1,128 songs from 2022.
This included the 757 most-streamed songs, the Top 50 songs from the Spotify Billions Club playlist, the Top 50 songs from the RIAA diamond-certified records list and 30 Grammy-winning albums.
The Fix the Mix report also analysed the representation of women and non binary people across different genres, revealing that only 2.8 per cent of music industry producers and engineers are women.
Nonprofit organisation We Are Moving the Needle partnered with music credits database Jaxsta to develop the report, collaborating with the two universities to examine the representation of women and non-binary people across a range of specialties including producers, engineers, mixing engineers, mastering engineers, programmers, vocal producers, editors and assistants.
Across the roles, women and non-binary individuals accounted for extremely low numbers — ranging from 0 per cent to 17.6 per cent in some sectors, the lowest being key technical roles.
Women and non-binary individuals were also found to be more concentrated within assistant roles — a finding the researches believe may be “indicative of a glass ceiling preventing this demographic from an upward trajectory.”
Grammy-award winning mastering engineer Emily Lazar founded We Are Moving the Needle in March 2021 to increase the number of women audio engineers and producers working in music.
She said the study confirms what she has already known after decades spent behind the board in recording studios.
“Women are not being given the same opportunities as men in production and engineering roles,” she said.
“Ensuring that there is more gender and racial diversity among music’s creators is not actually a complex problem if you want to solve it. The most important step is for artists and record labels to be able to hire from a more diverse pool of producers, mixers and engineers, but it’s exceedingly hard to hire people when you can’t find them.”
“We hope this report will give decision makers the motivation and tools they need to make real change in their hiring practices so we can achieve gender parity in production, engineering and mastering roles.”
Of thirty-six popular songs across Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube and TikTok — just 16 out of 256 credited producers and engineers were women and non-binary people.
Out of 634 songs analysed across 14 genres, a total of 3,785 key technical credits (producers and engineers) were recorded.
Women and non binary individuals made up just 5.2 per cent of producers. When it came to the total number of engineers, the number was lower — just 46 out of a total of 1,480 total engineers.
Electronic music (11.2 per cent) and Folk & Americana (10.6 per cent) had the highest representation of women and non-binary people in key technical roles, while Rap (0.7 per cent), and Christian & Gospel (0.8 per cent) had the lowest representation of women and non-binary people in key technical roles. In Metal, there was a total absence of women in key technical roles.
A total of 17 Grammy award winning albums in the 28 “best in genre” categories had no women or non-binary people as producers or engineers.
And out of 249 credits on these winners, just 19 were women and non-binary people.
In a press release, Brandi Carlile, whose album In These Silent Days, produced entirely by men, won Best Americana Album said, “I’m not sure everyone knows exactly where to start, but it begins with the courage to take a chance on someone who may not be getting recognised regularly in the field.”
“We have to start somewhere,” she said. “It’s no one’s fault and everyone’s fault at the same time. Even me. I urge my fellow artists and producers to make hiring decisions that work toward a more equitable future.”
The report acknowledged that while women and non-binary professionals are still outnumbered in the classroom, “they are entering the audio production industry in greater numbers than in years past.”
“Tremendous strides must be made to achieve significantly more gender representation in the recording industry,” the report reads. “Regardless of this increase in the pipeline, this study shows that women and non-binary people are simply not being hired after they earn audio production degrees or complete the necessary qualifications for credited roles.”
“Women and non-binary technical workers face hurdles in hiring and visibility that are considerably disproportionate.”
“This is not merely an option, but an imperative. We must take bold and decisive action to ensure that those who have historically been marginalised or underrepresented are given equal employment opportunities and a level playing field. Supporting and expanding these initiatives will help the music industry achieve the progress it purports to pursue.”
Xylo Aria, founder of Melbourne based social enterprise, Music Production for Women (MPW) told Women’s Agenda last September that one of the main barriers to entry in the music tech space for women is mental.
“There is a lot of self-doubt that I feel comes out of entering a space in which you feel you don’t belong,” she said. “You can’t be what you can’t see, and I definitely felt this was the case for me for a long time.”
“I didn’t see anyone who produced music who looked like me and therefore immediately felt like it wasn’t a space for me. There is definitely change for the better in the music industry today compared to years past, but I don’t think it’s enough to pat ourselves on the back and become complacent. There is a lot more to be done and sadly still a lot of ill treatment that we hear about in the industry that goes unreported and unresolved.”
Aria founded of the learning platform MPW which ran online events last October for women in the music tech space. She said she wanted to run more events like the one she held last year because they are vital for women and non-binary people.
“I wish events like this existed when I first considered producing music as it would have brought production within the realm of possibility for an independent artist like me,” she said.