page_title: Women in music
section_title: Popular music
hierarchical_section_title: Women in music / Music critics / Popular music
caption_attribution_description: Music and culture critic Ann Powers. Picture taken outside Experience Music Project, Seattle, Washington, during the 2007 Pop Conference.
context_page_description: Women in music describes the role of women as composers, songwriters, instrumental performers, singers, conductors, music scholars, music educators, music critics/music journalists and in other musical professions. As well, it describes music movements, events and genres related to women, women's issues and feminism.
  In the 2010s, while women constitute a significant proportion of popular music and classical music singers, and a significant proportion of songwriters, there are few women record producers, rock critics and rock instrumentalists. Notable women artists in pop, such as Bjork and Lady Gaga have commented about sexism and gender discrimination in the music industry. Additionally, a recent study led by Dr. Smith announced that "...over the last six years, the representation of women in the music industry has been even lower".
context_section_description: According to Anwen Crawford, the "problem for women [popular music critics] is that our role in popular music was codified long ago", which means that "[b]ooks by living female rock critics (or jazz, hip-hop, and dance-music critics, for that matter) are scant". Crawford notes that the "most famous rock-music critics—Robert Christgau, Greil Marcus, Lester Bangs, Nick Kent—are all male".
  Sociologist Simon Frith noted that pop and rock music "are closely associated with gender; that is, with conventions of male and female behaviour". According to Holly Kruse, both popular music articles and academic articles about pop music are usually written from "masculine subject positions". As well, there are relatively few women writing in music journalism: "By 1999, the number of female editors or senior writers at Rolling Stone hovered around...15%, [while] at Spin and Raygun, [it was] roughly 20%." Criticism associated with gender was discussed in a 2014 Jezebel article about the struggles of women in music journalism, written by music critic Tracy Moore, previously an editor at the Nashville Scene.
  The American music critic Ann Powers, as a female critic and journalist for a popular, male-dominated industry, has written critiques the perceptions of sex, racial and social minorities in the music industry. She has also written about feminism. In 2006 she accepted a position as chief pop-music critic at the Los Angeles Times, where she succeeded Robert Hilburn. In 2005, Powers co-wrote the book Piece by Piece with musician Tori Amos, which discusses the role of women in the modern music industry, and features information about composing, touring, performance, and the realities of the music business.
  Anwen Crawford, a writer for The Monthly contributed to Jessica Hopper's book of essays and profiles entitled The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic. Crawford's article "explores women's long struggle for visibility and recognition in the field of rock criticism, even though we've been helping to pioneer it from the start". Crawford states that "[t]he record store, the guitar shop, and now social media: when it comes to popular music, these places become stages for the display of male prowess"; "[f]emale expertise, when it appears, is repeatedly dismissed as fraudulent. Every woman who has ever ventured an opinion on popular music could give you some variation [of this experience]... and becoming a recognized "expert" (a musician, a critic) will not save [women] from accusations of fakery."
  Notable popular music critics include:
  Tanja Bakić
  Raquel Cepeda
  Ann Powers
  Joy Press
  Lillian Roxon
  Linda Solomon
  Penny Valentine
  Ellen Willis, Out of the Vinyl Deeps (2011)
caption: American pop music critic Ann Powers (pictured in 2007)
exif: {}