Women in rock
Women in rock describes the role of women singers, instrumentalists, record producers and other music professionals in rock music and popular music and the many subgenres and hybrid genres that have emerged from these genres. Women have a high prominence in many popular music styles as singers. However, professional women instrumentalists are uncommon in popular music, especially in rock genres such as heavy metal. "[P]laying in a band is largely a male homosocial activity, that is, learning to play in a band is largely a peer-based... experience, shaped by existing sex-segregated friendship networks.[1] As well, rock music "...is often defined as a form of male rebellion vis-à-vis female bedroom culture."[2]
In popular music, there has been a gendered "distinction between public (male) and private (female) participation" in music.[2] "[S]everal scholars have argued that men exclude women from bands or from the bands' rehearsals, recordings, performances, and other social activities."[4] "Women are mainly regarded as passive and private consumers of allegedly slick, prefabricated – hence, inferior – pop music..., excluding them from participating as high status rock musicians."[4] One of the reasons that there are rarely mixed gender bands is that "bands operate as tight-knit units in which homosocial solidarity – social bonds between people of the same sex... – plays a crucial role."[4] In the 1960s pop music scene, "[s]inging was sometimes an acceptable pastime for a girl, but playing an instrument...simply wasn't done."[5]
"The rebellion of rock music was largely a male rebellion; the women—often, in the 1950s and '60s, girls in their teens—in rock usually sang songs as personæ utterly dependent on their macho boyfriends...".[6] Philip Auslander says that "Although there were many women in rock by the late 1960s, most performed only as singers, a traditionally feminine position in popular music". Though some women played instruments in American all-female garage rock bands, none of these bands achieved more than regional success. So they "did not provide viable templates for women's on-going participation in rock".[7]: 2–3 In relation to the gender composition of heavy metal bands, it has been said that "[h]eavy metal performers are almost exclusively male"[8] "...[a]t least until the mid-1980s"[9] apart from "...exceptions such as Girlschool."[8] However, "...now [in the 2010s] maybe more than ever–strong metal women have put up their dukes and got down to it",[10] "carv[ing] out a considerable place for [them]selves."[11]
When Suzi Quatro emerged in 1973, "no other prominent female musician worked in rock simultaneously as a singer, instrumentalist, songwriter, and bandleader".[7]: 2 According to Auslander, she was "kicking down the male door in rock and roll and proving that a female musician ... and this is a point I am extremely concerned about ... could play as well if not better than the boys".[7]: 3
A number of these artists are also notable for singing and songwriting, but they are listed here for their instrumental skills: