Women in music open up about sexism

Story by Leila Hawkins
Photo by Alex Gallegos / creative licence

At the start of 2024, the UK government’s Women and Equalities Committee released a report that examined discrimination against women in the music industry. Its findings were detailed and damning — as a brief snapshot, 61% of women working in radio said they had experienced sexist comments about their appearance; Black women musicians are paid 52% less than white male counterparts; and as recently as the summer of 2023, only one in 10 headliners at music festivals were women.Â
While these stats relate specifically to the UK, they give us a good indication of what is happening elsewhere. In her new book Candid: Conversations on Women in the Music Industry, Sammy Stein dives deep into the challenges women face working in the music sector, all over the world.Â
Stein has interviewed more than 40 women in a variety of roles, from A&R managers to instrumentalists and songwriters. It is their experiences that form the basis of the book, and while what they reveal won’t come as a shock, their first-hand accounts of issues like disparities in pay, balancing motherhood with touring, and unwelcome advances in dressing rooms, are hugely compelling in their honesty and can-do approach to dealing with them.

Each chapter addresses a different question, from the broad “do you believe your career has been affected because you are feÂmale?” to the specific instances of sexism they’ve encountered. These vary from the casual assumptions of which instruments women should play to the struggles of getting home safely from late-night gigs. Anecdotes recalling harassment (“I had to deal with men getting their appendages out, being accosted in dressing rooms, a sound engineer getting in my bunk on the bus…”), make it painfully clear that there is still much to do to root out harmful misogyny in the music industry.
Stein also includes a chapter where men share their perceptions of the discrimination women face and how they’ve worked to challenge it, and offers the uniquely insightful perspective of Saskhia Menendez, who, as a transgender woman, experienced both the privileges often enjoyed by men before she transitioned as well as the barriers many women face in their careers.
Despite the subject matter, the book is uplifting — with supportive, empowering messages of standing up to misogyny and creative ways to tackle it. Stein, who has authored several books including The Wonder of Jazz and Pause, Play, Repeat where musicians describe how Covid-19 impacted their lives, is exceptional as a researcher and chronicler. Candid is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand the nuances of gender dynamics in the arts.
Candid: Conversations on Women in the Music Industry by Sammy Stein is out now.Â

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