At the 60th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony last Sunday, guests were encouraged to wear white roses in solidarity with the #MeToo movement--a gesture perhaps also intended to cast the music world as an industry that succeeded in supporting women where others, like Hollywood, hadn't. That notion wilted quicker than the blooms on so many lapels, as Grammy after Grammy went to men. Best New Artist winner Alessia Cara was the only female musician to claim a solo award during the three-and-a-half hour telecast; women won just 11 of 84 awards on the evening; SZA, the most-nominated female act, went home without a single award.
The situation went from bad to worse when Recording Academy President Neil Portnow capped the night by telling reporters that women needed to "step up." This followed a report by Variety claiming the ceremony's organizers refused to offer Lorde, the only female nominee for Album of the Year, a performance slot of her own. The blogosphere swiftly slammed Portnow for his comments and the Grammys for excluding women (as well mega-hit "Despacito" and the entire genre of hip-hop) from major category victories. Yesterday, a group of the most powerful women in music wrote an open letter asking Portnow to step down.
The dearth of women winning Grammys should come as little surprise: just 9.3% of nominees over the past five years are female. The imbalance isn't limited to award shows, nor is it something new. Beyond music's biggest night--and underscored by the growing list of men from Charlie Walk to Russell Simmons who've stepped away from powerful posts in the wake of allegations ranging from sexual harassment to rape--the industry is wracked by institutionalized misogyny.
"The Grammys are just symptomatic of a large representational roadblock facing women in the music business," says Dr. Stacy Smith, coauthor of a groundbreaking study on gender and ethnicity in the music business for the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. "The broader problem really lies in an ecosystem of artists and their ability to have access to opportunity."
Smith's numbers, which look at a sampling of the 600 most popular songs of the past half-decade, have given statistical heft to arguments swirling especially strongly of late. Among all performers in her study, only 22.4% were women (32% of solo acts, 8.7% of bands and 5.1% of duos). The numbers were even more staggering among songwriters (12.3%) and worst among producers (2%). Smith says the overall level of female representation in music is actually lower than in the much-maligned film industry.
Another aspect of the inequality, of course, is compensation. Among the highest-paid musicians of 2017, as measured by Forbes, only five of 25 were women: No. 2 Beyoncé ($105 million), No. 9 Adele ($69 million), No. 17, Taylor Swift ($44 million), No. 19 Celine Dion ($42 million) and No. 24 Jennifer Lopez ($38 million). Tellingly, none of those acts are older than 49; among the men, eight are above age 50 (including septuagenarians Paul McCartney and Elton John).
"I don't think it's that men age more gracefully," says Forbes 30 Under 30 alum Kim Kaupe, cofounder (with Forbes contributor Brittany Hodak) of ZinePak, a company that works with the world's top acts to create products for superfans. "It's a mindset that you either have to be, as a female, young and hot and like a little tartlet, or there's no space for you. … That's harmful."
The music industry's imbalance is self-perpetuating. Smith notes that the lack of female executives in the upper ranks of record companies, concert promoters and other musical outfits leads to "implicit and explicit biases in the hiring and promotion." Kaupe points to inflection points as simple as male executives bringing underlings to important meetings: "Nine times out of ten, that's a dude … those small decisions build up."
In order for things to change, the music industry must find a way to interrupt the business-as-usual cycle. Kaupe recalls being asked to speak as a panelist at a recent industry conference and inquiring as to why there were no female keynote speakers. "If you know someone, I'm all ears," the male organizer told her--and ultimately brought on the woman Kaupe recommended. Institutions that are stuck in their ways, including the Grammys, may soon find themselves in jeopardy.
"I'm not going to keep begging and asking and begging and asking to have a seat at your table," says Kaupe. "I'm gonna go build another table or I'm gonna find other tables that let me have a seat."
There are, however, a few signs of hope for the music business when it comes to inclusiveness, at least for certain groups. In the past two years of the dataset explored by Smith and her colleagues, half of the women who released popular songs were nonwhite. That's a vast improvement over the level of representation in Hollywood and other creative industries.
"These findings were really surprising in a positive way because we haven't seen the other platforms embrace women of color in the same way that music has," says Smith. "While there's much work to be done on gender, which will be beneficial to all female artists, both women of color and men of color are doing better vis-a-vis other media."
And the more up-and-comers from underrepresented groups see their reflection in the ranks of music's power players, from artists to songwriters to agents to managers to lawyers, the more will believe it's possible to have a career in music. As Kaupe puts it: "If you can see it, you can be it."
Serving as a positive role model was part of the reason Katy Perry agreed to sit down with Forbes in 2014, opening up about her finances for a cover story on her business empire.
"Hopefully this kind of article will inspire young people to be able to know that they can do this type of thing," Perry said. "I'm not here to brag … I'm here to inspire other females."
For more on the business of music, get my new book 3 Kings: Diddy, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z and Hip-Hop's Multibillion-Dollar Rise, follow me on Twitter and sign up for my email updates.
