Recent Study: Women Are Still Underrepresented And Stereotyped In Music

Billie Eilish and Hayley Williams (Instagram @billieilish)

JAKARTA - A new report on United States music chart trends has found that female-identifying artists, songwriters, and producers are still under-represented and stereotyped.

The sixth annual University Of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report, which focuses on Billboard's year-end Hot 100 chart for 2022, found that the number of top-selling female artists in the US increased that year, however, the proportion of female songwriters making any commercial impact remained small.

According to The Guardian, the overall number of women represented in the chart is 30 percent. Only 14 percent of songwriters represented women on the chart (slightly down from 2021's statistic of 14.3 percent), while only 3.4 percent of the 232 producers represented on the year-end chart were women, and one non- binary.

In particular, the 30 percent representation has marked a new peak in the number of female artists on year-end charts over the past decade. However, the statistics for female songwriters and producers have remained largely the same over the last decade.

Since 2012, which was the start of the reporting period for the Annenberg report, the number of female songwriters represented on Billboard's year-end chart has never exceeded 14.4 percent (as of 2019).

"There is good news for female artists this year," said Dr. Stacy L Smith, who led the report, in a statement. "But don't rush it – there is still a lot of work to be done before we can say that women have equal opportunities in the music industry."

Additionally, the majority of artists on the 2022 final charts are from racially underrepresented backgrounds – a 6.6 percentage point decrease from 2021, and an 8.4 percentage point decrease from 2020 – and 65 percent of these artists are women.

The peak number of female producers represented on the chart also occurred in 2019 when 5 percent of producers on the year-end list were women.

Dr. Smith added: "Until female and male artists hire female songwriters and producers, the numbers are not going to change. This is about more than just letting an artist credit themselves to a song, it's about identifying talent and hiring women in these roles. That's the only way we'll see change happen.”

Elsewhere, in its analysis of Grammy award nominations, the report found that 13.9 percent of individual nominees were women, with one nonbinary nominee.

The Annenberg Report says in its conclusion that while the gains made for female artists represented on the charts are promising, women behind the scenes in songwriting and producing roles are still underrepresented.

It was proposed that "women are stereotyped – in terms of the kinds of songs and genres they can compose, and the roles they can play – they are sexualized, and their talents and experiences ignored".

Schemes that support women to build experience in music may be especially important to help correct the imbalance.

The study follows the reaction in the UK to the category Artist Of The Year nomination at the 2023 BRIT Awards being filled only by males.

The nominees for this month's upcoming awards were announced on January 12 and in the Artist Of The Year category, Central Cee, Fred Again.., George Ezra, Harry Styles, and Stormzy were all nominated.

This is the second year that the awards have abandoned gender categories in favor of gender-neutral categories, but when it was revealed that the Artist Of The Year category was all male, the awards were criticized by fans and figures from across the entertainment industry.