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Women in music

Women in music have many roles and types of contributions. Women shape music movements, events, and genres of music through their roles as composers, songwriters, instrumental performers, singers, conductors, and music educators. Women's music has been created by and for women in part to explore ideas of women's rights and feminism within musical expressions. The impact of women in music influences concepts of creativity, activism, and culture.

For the newsletter, see Women in Music (periodical).

In the 2010s, while women constituted a significant proportion of popular music and classical music singers, and a significant proportion of songwriters (many of them being singer-songwriters), there were few women record producers, rock critics, or rock instrumentalists. Female artists in pop music, exemplified by figures like Björk, Lady Gaga and Madonna, have openly addressed the issue of sexism within the music industry.[2][3][4] Additionally, a 2021 study led by Dr. Smith announced that "...over the last six years, the representation of women in the music industry has been even lower."[5][6] In the realm of classical music, despite the substantial contributions of women composers spanning from the Medieval period to the present day, women composers are significantly underrepresented in the commonly performed classical music repertoire, music history textbooks, and music encyclopedias. For example, in the Concise Oxford History of Music, Clara Schumann is one of the only female composers who is mentioned.


Women constitute a significant proportion of instrumental soloists in classical music and the percentage of women in orchestras is increasing. A 2015 article on concerto soloists in major Canadian orchestras, however, indicated that 84% of the soloists with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra were men. In 2012, women made up just 6% of the top-ranked Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. Fewer women are instrumental players in popular music genres such as rock and heavy metal, although there have been various female instrumentalists and all-female bands. Women are particularly underrepresented in extreme metal genres.[7]: 103  Women are also underrepresented in orchestral conducting, music criticism/music journalism, music producing, and sound engineering. While women were discouraged from composing in the 19th century, and there were few women musicologists, women became involved in music education "to such a degree that women dominated [this field] during the later half of the 19th century and well into the 20th century."[8]


According to Jessica Duchen, a music writer for London's The Independent, women musicians in classical music are "too often judged for their appearances, rather than their talent" and they face pressure "to look sexy onstage and in photos."[9] Duchen states that while "[t]here are women musicians who refuse to play on their looks...the ones who do tend to be more materially successful."[9] According to the UK's Radio 3 editor, Edwina Wolstencroft, the music industry has long been open to having women in performance or entertainment roles, but women are much less likely to have positions of authority, such as being the conductor of an orchestra,[10] a profession which has been called "one of the last glass ceilings in the music industry."[11] In popular music, while there are many women singers recording songs, there are very few women behind the audio console acting as music producers, the individuals who direct and manage the recording process.[12] One of the most recorded artists is a woman, Asha Bhosle, an Indian singer who is best known as a playback singer in Hindi cinema.[1]

Glass ceiling in the music industry[edit]

The lack of women in the top executive roles in the music industry, in labels, publishers, and talent management has been brought out in multiple research studies and news articles. The industry itself recognized the issue decades ago but little has changed.


In 1982, Cosmopolitan published an article interviewing and profiling six women executives, Women in the Business side of the Music Business, which found that, "For the first time, women are pioneering in the zany competitive, and very lucrative pop-record industry...."[13][14] Only a few women executives were included in the chapter about women in the business side of the music industry in the encyclopedic book, She Bop: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul, which primarily focused on women musicians and vocalists.


The New York Times reported in an article titled "For Women in Music, Equality Remains Out of Reach", from 8 March 2021, "Three years ago, an academic tallied the performers, producers and songwriters behind hit songs, and found that women's representation fell on a scale between, roughly, poor and abysmal."[15][16]


Despite the gains in the 1970s and 1980s, the lack of women senior executives in the music business is still an issue today.[17] According to a 2021 Annenberg study, "...across 70 major and independent music companies...13.9% were women."[18] Women fare far better outside the music industry; according to a 2021 report by U.S. News & World Report, "Women held 31.7% of top executive positions across all industries…"[19]

who has written multiple hits for other artists before launching her own incredibly successful recording career. Her album Tapestry sold over 15 million copies worldwide.[20]

Carole King

who has self-produced all of her musically incredibly diverse albums.[20]

Joni Mitchell

who has sole writing credit on over 700 songs and is described as the most successful female country artist of all time.[20]

Dolly Parton

And , who wrote on the political issues of the white working-class women in America, including contraception and divorce. For her accomplishments she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.[21][20]

Loretta Lynn

(1846–1883)

Agnes Tyrrell

(1858–1944)

Ethel Smyth

(1867–1944)

Amy Beach

(1885–1923)

Dora Pejačević

(1887–1953)

Florence Price

(1887–1979)

Nadia Boulanger

(1893–1918)

Lili Boulanger

(1905–1990)

Verdina Shlonsky

(1907–1984)

Imogen Holst

(1913–2000)

Violet Archer

(1915–1940)

Vítězslava Kaprálová

(born 1928)

Thea Musgrave

(born 1931)

Sofia Gubaidulina

Joni Mitchell

Bonnie Raitt

Nancy Wilson

Kaki King

Orianthi

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Jennifer Batten

Mary Ford

Lita Ford

Joan Jett

Carole King

Tal Wilkenfeld

Shirley Horn

Eva Cassidy

Ruth Brown

Marian Anderson

(multi-instrumentalist)

Gunhild Carling

Elly Ameling

Cecilia Bartoli

Kathleen Battle

Maria Callas

Natalie Dessay

Joyce DiDonato

Frederica von Stade

Renée Fleming

Elina Garanca

Susan Graham

Anna Netrebko

Jessye Norman

Eva Badura-Skoda

Margaret Bent

Suzanne Cusick

Ursula Günther

Maud Cuney Hare

Liudmila Kovnatskaya

Kendra Preston Leonard

Rosetta Reitz

Elaine Sisman

Hedi Stadlen

Rose Rosengard Subotnik

Anahit Tsitsikian

(born 1956)

Marin Alsop

(born 1981)

Jessica Bejarano

(1904–1995)

Frieda Belinfante

(born 1955)

Gisele Ben-Dor

(1887–1979)

Nadia Boulanger

(1902–1989)

Antonia Brico

(born 1937)

Sylvia Caduff

(born 1976)

Joana Carneiro

(born 1959)

Sian Edwards

(born 1954)

JoAnn Faletta

(born 1949)

Jane Glover

(born 1986)

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla

(born 1961)

Julia Jones

(born 1970)

Karen Kamensek

(born 1966)

Natalia Luis-Bassa

(born 1980)

Alondra de la Parra

(born 1978)

Kristiina Poska

(born 1986)

Lidiya Yankovskaya

(born 1961)

Simone Young

(born 1973)

Xian Zhang

Tanja Bakić

Raquel Cepeda

Ann Powers

Joy Press

Lillian Roxon

Linda Solomon

Penny Valentine

Out of the Vinyl Deeps (2011)

Ellen Willis

Other musical professions[edit]

Record producing and sound engineering[edit]

A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "few women in record production and sound engineering."[12] Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts."[12] "Only three women have ever been nominated for best producer at the Brits or the Grammys" and none won either award.[228] "Women who want to enter the [producing] field face a boys' club, or a guild mentality."[228]


Despite this, women haven been taking on the challenge since the 1940s. Mary Shipman Howard was an engineer in New York City in the 1940s. Lillian McMurry was a record producer and founder of Trumpet Records in the 1950s. One of the first women to produce, engineer, arrange and promote music on her own rock and roll music label was Cordell Jackson (1923–2004). She founded the Moon Records label in Memphis in 1956 and began releasing and promoting on the label singles she recorded in her home studio, serving as engineer, producer and arranger. Ethel Gabriel had a 40-year career with RCA and was the first major label record producer.


Trina Shoemaker is a mixer, record producer and sound engineer responsible for producing/engineering and/or mixing records for bands such as Queens of the Stone Age,[229] Sheryl Crow,[229] Emmylou Harris,[229] Something for Kate,[229] Nanci Griffith[229] and many more. In 1998 Shoemaker became the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album for her work on The Globe Sessions.[230] In addition to Crow, Shoemaker went on to work with artists such as Blues Traveller, Emmylou Harris, the Indigo Girls and the Dixie Chicks.[231]


Other women include:

Lists of women in music

Women in classical music

Women in jazz

Unsung: A History of Women in American Music

Women in art

Women in dance

Women in film

Women in rock

Women Who Rock: Making Scenes, Building Communities Oral History Archive

Music and women's suffrage in the United States