Music’s gender gap: why so few women make the US pop charts, whether as singers, songwriters or producers

A new survey of top pop charts over the past six years finds that men overwhelmingly dominate the ranks of artists and songwriters and that only 2 per cent of producers in music are female.

The University of Southern California study shows women comprised just 22.4 per cent of artists and 12.3 per cent of songwriters on the Billboard Hot 100, a singles chart that crosses musical genres.

Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift dominated the charts during this period but the survey found that relatively fewer other women in the music industry are employed behind those superstars.

“For women, pursuing music as an artist is largely a solo activity, and appears to be a lonely one,” the researchers write. They note that the numbers were “surprising” because women are big customers of music, making up 53 per cent of digital music buyers in 2014.

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The university’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative researchers examined 600 songs appearing on the Billboard Hot 100 end-of-year charts from 2012 to 2017. A total of 1,239 solo performers, duos and bands were included.

Some of the more eye-popping numbers include that only two women of colour were among the ranks of the 651 producers listed in the charts while nine male songwriters were responsible for one-fifth of the songs in the sample.