US report finds women remain underrepresented and stereotyped in music

The Annenberg study shows the biggest discrepancies are in production and sound engineering and artists are failing commitments to redress the balance

The amount of top-selling female artists in the US increased in 2022, but the proportion of female songwriters making any commercial impact is still dismal, a new study has shown. The sixth annual University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report reveals that while the amount of women represented in Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart – which tallies the most commercially successful songs of the year – jumped 28.7% last year, to a total of 30%, only 14% of songwriters represented on the chart were women, a slight decrease from the 2021 statistic of 14.3%. Of the 232 producers represented on the year-end chart, only 3.4% were women, and one producer was non-binary.

“There is good news for women artists this year,” said Dr Stacy L Smith, who led the report, in a statement, “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves – there is still much work to be done before we can say that women have equal opportunity in the music industry.”