Women In Rock (Introduction)
By Ellen Thompson, Photo by Brook Reynolds

Chances are if you scan the Billboard Top 40 Rock Chart this week you’ll spot at least one female artist up there. But there is an even better chance that not a single female artist made it into the Top 10, let alone Top 20.

With Taylor Swift fearlessly strumming away at her acoustic guitar on MTV’s TRL countdown while Miley Cyrus speaks to legions of wide-eyed pre-teens with her latest hit via radio air waves, Americans across the country are left with some pretty hard evidence that women are holding it down in today’s music industry. They’ve even got some evidence that women are making their mark in Rock and Roll, thanks to these young ladies. But it appears that the charts have a different story to tell.

Tegan Quinn, of indie duo Tegan and Sara, can still recall an afternoon in late 2004 just shortly after the release of So Jealous. Flipping through a music magazine, her guitarist had spotted Tegan and her sister Sara Quinn at No. 36 on the Top 40 Alternative Chart. For the next month or two the women, to their surprise, watched themselves climb into the 20s then into the teens, says Tegan, marking the first time they had reached such heights on a chart. But Tegan and Sara quickly realized they were alone on the chart, there wasn’t one other female artist or act listed alongside them.

“And I remember just being like really sad about that, but being really proud about it. Like being like, ‘fuck yeah we got in’,” says Tegan. “But then there was a part of me that was like, ‘was there only one spot and by getting in did we push another female act out? Like is the ratio still that small, like 40 to 1 for women in alternative radio?’”

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time Tegan and Sara had witnessed the industry handing women the short end of the stick; an end that they too had received many times before and continue to. Whether it was fighting their way onto the charts, booking tours, performing on stage, sitting in board rooms or recording and marketing their music, the sisters were constantly staring down a sexism within the industry they assumed had died out two decades earlier. However, Tegan and Sara, as well as Amy Millan of Stars and Broken Social Scene and British indie singer Kate Nash, agree that aside from each sexist comment that’s hollered at them while on stage women have made not only progress in the industry, but a great impact. Then again there are those times in which a questionable deal or request is placed on the table causing them to believe the industry is at a standstill. Left waiting for the next wave of progress to come, they admit they don’t see it washing over the rock charts.

GENDER NORMS IN ROCK: REVOLUTION VS TRADITION
“Rock has always been about crossing boundaries, being revolutionary, like fuck the man and all of that. Sex drugs and rock and roll,” explains Ohio State University women’s studies professor and author of “See Jane Rock: Feminism and Popular Music” Susan Burgess. “The question is to what extent does it do that for sex and gender norms?”

Traditionally, rock and roll hasn’t handled gender norms very well, especially at its start. For instance, there are those all too well known scenarios in which Elvis or The Beatles are center stage … and where are the girls? Screaming in the background. But before those early memorable rock and roll moments, the blues were capturing ears as more than a handful of women were in the spotlight singing about dogging their men, Burgess notes.

“So just like in feminism, there are these conflicting threads of oppression and stereotypical norms and progress in rock that continues until this day,” she says. “But then you also have to acknowledge that serious scholars have said that rock music is most responsible for popularizing feminism. It’s the single most important factor in terms of how feminism has been popularized through the 80s, 90s and 21st century.”

While rock music was popularizing feminism in one way or another during the 80s, the decade happened to be an interesting time for the feminism movement, in that it was a time of really serious back lash.

“It wasn’t a great time for women in the culture and then you think about rock and roll. And what’s going on during that time is sort of punk and rap had just emerged in the 70s and in the 80s there’s not a new sub genre that emerges, but rather MTV emerges,” Burgess explains. “And in the beginning of MTV there’s sort of this kind of duel going on regarding women, you have some of them singing and making a statement and then you have some of them bouncing around like every school boy’s dream. So there’s still this very traditional representation of women.”

~Read more of this huge article by getting our current issue!