2025 was a bad year for women, music agrees
Decades of progress in women’s rights seemed to plunge into the ground last year, with everyone’s grandma feeling young again with subservient trad wives and manosphere conservatism back in vogue.
For anyone who feels like they’ve seen it all after Epstein’s drop meant everyone you’ve given money to at least once is a sex offender, we have more bad news: the music industry is no beach holiday for women either.
The annual study on music inclusion by the University of Southern California School of Communications and Journalism examined the most popular songs each year as measured by the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End Chart. An updated study, released this month under the title ‘Inclusion in the Recording Studio?’, concluded that “there was no progress for women in music” in 2025.
Among general falling statistics were a decrease in artist, producer, songwriter and Grammy winner representation in proportion to men. Although that surprised no one, I was aghast to find out that men outnumber women in the music industry three to one, with a ratio of 27 to one in the production seat.
Only four of those producing this year were women of colour, but it was at least alleviating that the study found over half of the artists in their sample to be people of colour. USC observed the genres in which women are consistently sidelined, with data going back to 2012 to demonstrate an overall trend of prevalence within pop (36.9%) and R&B/Soul (26.7%), while being almost invisible in genres like hip-hop, alternative, and country.
“While there has been change since 2012, the past few years have seen progress slow or even reverse. Importantly, once again, the findings are driven not by more women working, but by fewer men appearing on the charts,” the study’s authors Dr Stacy L Smith, Dr Katherine Pieper, Karla Hernandez, and Sam Wheeler wrote.
One of their most surprising categories, the Grammy award metric, indicated that “women still have few chances to receive significant recognition for their creative labour…”
“Clearly, there are still barriers to being recognised with a nomination and to winning a Grammy that impact women more than men”.
Although ingrained attitudes are often the cause of so wide a gender gap, a House of Commons Committee report on ‘Misogyny in Music’ also points to the unique working setups in music contributing to the “boy’s club” exclusivity and the primed environment for sexual abuse. Male-domination can be amplified in such a field by the precarity of the kind of work available, giving rise “to significant power imbalances in working relationships”, while “the informal nature of many workplaces which, together with late-night working, often in places where alcohol and drugs are available, can result in women working in environments that are unsafe,” the report noted.
The Women and Equalities Committee report, much like USC’s study, points to a general improvement in representation thanks to intersectional groups pushing for equality in the male-dominated industry, but the authors of ‘Inclusion in the Recording Studio?’ still recommend more radical changes in the top ranks. “Over half of the songs are missing women songwriters, and more than half are without women producers. Changing the constellation of personnel working in the recording studio is a significant step toward changing the industry,” the study reports.
For the industry’s key players to find a new path forward, they recommend reviewing “who participates in songwriting camps, who is identified to work with talent, and whether artists are given the chance to work with women”. All changes seem actionable, and more women are singing in less sexualised guises than a few years ago; change comes slowly, and if it doesn’t, it’s reflective of the times.
