January 22, 2020

Raw Data: Women in Songwriting

I don’t know squat about modern music, so I was a little surprised to see the latest stats on the number of women who write popular music. In short, there are hardly any:

The figures for 2019 are worse for producers (5 percent female) but a bit better for performers (22.5 percent female).

There’s more here in the full Annenberg report. I do have one comment about all this: I’ve heard of all but two of the top women songwriters but I’ve only heard of one of the men. This is mostly a commentary on my dismal knowledge of contemporary music, but I wonder why that is?

HERE ARE THE FACTS:

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ONE MORE QUICK THING:

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As we wrote over the summer, traffic has been down at Mother Jones and a lot of sites with many people thinking news is less important now that Donald Trump is no longer president. But if you're reading this, you're not one of those people, and we're hoping we can rally support from folks like you who really get why our reporting matters right now. And that's how it's always worked: For 45 years now, a relatively small group of readers (compared to everyone we reach) who pitch in from time to time has allowed Mother Jones to do the type of journalism the moment demands and keep it free for everyone else.

Please pitch in with a donation during our fall fundraising drive if you can. We can't afford to come up short, and there's still a long way to go by November 5.

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