Country music a fight for women

Date01 April 2021
Published date01 April 2021
AuthorRebecca Fox
WE can all name top female country music artists — Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, The (Dixie) Chicks, Faith Hill, the list goes on.

What many people do not know is that most of them became global sensations despite country music.

So when Canadian-born Kiwi Tami Neilson tells her audience that female country artists' songs only get played once on United States country music radio for every 9.7 times male artists' are, they are "gobsmacked".

"When they hear about the early days they are not surprised by the sexism and misogyny, but they are shocked when we show them the statistics from country music radio today — that in 2020 women only get 10% of country music radio airplay, 10% of awards, recognition in country music."

It is just one of the astonishing facts that are peppered through Neilson's latest show The F Word, which combines the research of Dr Jada Watson, a University of Ottawa, Canada, musicology professor, with music from the first No1 hit for a female country music artist in 1952 through to today.

Watson's research, when released, made headlines in the United States as it exposed long-running gender inequalities in country music.

Her research into the number of times an artist's song is played — "a spin" — over the 19-year span of the study shows while male artist spins go from 5.8 million to 10.3 million in that period, women go from 2.8 million to 1.1 million.

"Women ... are gradually eliminated from radio culture to a point of 11.3% of year-end charts and 9.2% of the annual spins in 2018."

Yet in the late 1990s, female artists were included in a rotation at a much higher rate than they had been, reaching a high of 34% and registering 40% of the chart-topping songs in 1996, rising to 52% in 1998.

However, since 2000 there have been "drastic changes" in popularity charts that could only be the result of changes in programming, Watson says.

Even Neilson was surprised at the stark figures Watson uncovered.

"It's something we've all known is a problem but to see the actual graphs in black and white or a pie chart and we're only a tiny sliver of that pie.

"It's this unspoken rule in country radio for a long time that they do not play females and if they do its in the overnight slot when no-one is listening."

Neilson, who has always been an advocate for women's rights, wanted to tell the stories behind the fact and figures — highlighting the battles women musicians have faced "just to be seen and heard".

"It's a show to shake things up. To...

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