Women in Rock: The Gendered Power Imbalance of the Scene

Note: In this discussion about gender and gender inequality, I only refer to men and women. Those are not the only two options, gender and gender expression are not binary, but this was the most succinct way of making my point. Please, reach out if you feel I could do better.

This week, we're switching it up a little. We're going to talk about something that really gets me going, something that gets me yelling in minutes, something I'm so passionate about I actually feel a little bad if you've personally been on the receiving end of my many rants about it.

This week, we're talking about women in the rock scene. Or better yet, the lack thereof.

I have a really distinct memory of hanging out in my best friend's basement as a kid, watching MTV music videos on YouTube and eating only orange Starbursts. I made a comment about some musician and she turned to me blank faced, saying, "I don't like female musicians." I was taken back for a second and then, I remember this clearer than anything else, I thought, Are there even that many women playing music out there?

And therein lies the scene's biggest problem. There isn't, and there never really has been, a fair place for women.

I'm going to start by saying none of this is meant to be accusatory. I am just as guilty as everyone else in the scene. All of my favorite bands are fronted and composed of men. This is me calling us out though. We need to do better.

First of all, when I decided I wanted to write about this and think about it more critically, I started looking for academic sources to back up my thoughts. I found next to nothing, which is horrifying in its own right. Not only is the lack of opportunity for women in rock a problem but no one is talking about it. If I was an academic, this is the kind of thing I'd be researching. (So if you're interested in this sort of stuff too, there's room for you! Please do it!)

Here's what it boils down to: There is, and always has been, a gendered power imbalance in the scene.

Brit, please speak in English and not feminism.

Okay. Let me try again. We've created a culture, not just in music, where men are the active actors and women are the passive consumers (I know gender and gender behavior aren't this basic or binary but I'm trying to simplify the point here). It goes back to the beginning of the gender binary, but men have always been allowed to do things, things like hunting, having careers, and nowadays making art for the mainstream. For the longest time, women were expected to benefit from these actions but they were never allowed to do them themselves.

If you're in the pit for a mainstream rock concert, you're going to see a lot of women. From personal experience, I can say the less mainstream the headliner, the more gender representative the crowd, but that's not the point. Nearly all of these mammoth bands (bands I love, people, don't forget that) are solely made up of men. I literally can name one giant rock band fronted by a woman and I guarantee you, we're thinking of the same one here.

It'd be easy to shrug it off and claim the abundance of female fans attending mainstream rock concerts happens because they're attracted to the male performers but that's unbelievably misogynistic, heteronormative, and just ignorant to argue.

Before I accidentally go off on a tangent about gender literally being performed by bands like early Panic! at the Disco and My Chemical Romance, who coded themselves as feminine in order to lessen the power imbalance between them and their die-hard fans, I'm just going to leave it here. There's a reason those groups went mainstream and it wasn't just the music. There's a level of respect between artists and their fans that not every musician is able to recognize.

Now, we've established that women are almost always the consumers of music, but what about performers? My original question still stands. Are there even that many women playing music out there?

The answer is yes. Kind of. There are more than when I was a kid and there are definitely more than I assumed there were when I first really got into the scene. The issue is, for probably borderline misogynistic reasons, very few women or bands fronted by women go mainstream.

In 2017, Pitchfork found that only a quarter of artists booked to the biggest music festivals were women, according to The Washington Post. The following year, they claimed seven out of 10 artists on festival bills were men or all-male bands.

It's steadily getting better, as most feminist issues are, but there's still such a long way to go. I've made it a point to seek out music made by women this year and in doing so found some really great stuff (PVRIS, HAIM, I'm looking at you). I totally recommend you try it too.

Even more important, however, is letting women and girls like the music they like. I didn't get into rock and punk until way later in life because it wasn't what girls were traditionally "allowed" to like. I didn't pick up a guitar until I was 19 but pretty much every 13-year-old boy (including my brother) is handed an electric guitar on their birthday like some sort of rite of passage.

I guess what I'm getting at here is let people like the things they like. If a woman wants to fling herself around stage, thrashing on guitar, let her. If I want to lose my mind in the pit for my favorite band, I'm going to do it whether there's a place for me or not. I suggest you make room.

So, what do you guys think? Got any personal experiences you'd like to share? Any research to point me to? Want to hear my full rant about the performative nature of men in rock? Comment below and, as always, thanks for listening to me rant! See you on the flip side. // bcp