Brief Summary

In this article platinum selling songwriter and producer Ashea reflects on why you find so few women in recording studios and possible ways to change that.

Going Deeper

I’ll preface by saying this, women are of course not a monolith, so this probably won’t work for all women, nevertheless, with some of the advice I’m about to give you, you stand a good chance of convincing, at least a few.

Although things gradually appear to be changing for the better, it’s still quite a novelty, and rare to find a woman sitting operating the SSL desk during a session or miking up a guitar amp. There are of course the incredibly talented outliers who have been in this game for decades, Silvia Massy and Linda Perry for instance.

To this day women make up around 3% of producers and 12.6% of songwriters according to reports analysing the Billboard Top 100 (and even in the general audio engineering world these figures persist), which is an unjustifiably low number. Why so low? In other traditionally male-dominated fields, we’ve seen a rise in the percentage of women. Even in the Tech world, which is renowned for being a Bro den, the percentage of women currently stands at 26.7% (surveys have seen this percentage has dropped, however, over the last 2 years).  

Why are there so few women in audio? Let’s start with my personal, perhaps anecdotal, experience:

I come from a musical family on both sides and was brought up around constant music, dance and theatre, and despite being a keen piano player as a kid, my career trajectory at the time was markedly different from the boys/men in my family. It was assumed without even a second thought that the girls would pursue the singing and dancing side of things and the boys, well, they would become engineers, play in a band, etc. It wasn’t explicitly said, it’s just that there didn’t seem to be an option for me to believe otherwise, so I went on to study and perform as a dancer and singer for a short while. I eventually, however, found myself drawn more and more to the recording studio, at first as a songwriter and artist, but it wasn’t long before I downloaded my first DAW, devoured endless youtube tutorials, and started creating my own beats. It was a confusing time because It still didn’t register that I could actually follow my passion and become a producer which I was increasingly preferring to the artist route. It sounds silly now maybe, but at that time I’d not seen one single woman in all of the studio sessions I’d been in, in London, New York, you name it, not one woman (and bear in mind, this was less than a decade ago) so it felt like completely new territory for me. I stuck it out and followed my passion and eventually, the conversation began around women in music, so it was encouraging to gradually see more people like myself pop up. 

You Can’t Be What You Can’t See

Do most women just not naturally gravitate to this area as some have argued? I’m skeptical of this argument for many reasons but it would require a very in-depth article to analyse this properly. However, I will say that, we are starting to see more women coming up through the audio engineering route, probably thanks to very recent efforts to encourage us. As the saying goes, ‘You can’t be what you can’t see’. It shouldn’t be underestimated how important role models are for everyone, but especially young people. So to conclude, many women are very much interested in audio and are excelling at it too.

What is it about the music industry/studio environment that has put many women off either starting or continuing, and is it changing? 

Other than the aforementioned lack of female role models, women, and I would dare to say most of us (if the interviews and conversations I’ve had with other artists/producers are anything to go by) have been subjected to various unwanted advances, during sessions with (male) producers. Not just in the studio, but also the ‘networking’ side of things, perhaps a friendly coffee turned awkward, pesty DM slides, you name it, it can be quite disheartening for female artists/producers who put their hearts and souls into pursuing an already gruelling career to feel like we are not being taken seriously at times. The sinking realisation that maybe they don’t love your talent at all, and, yes, while two things can be true at once, (as I was reminded by a male friend of mine) it can be morale-destroying to say the least, if it keeps happening.

So why does the above put so many women off? Well in case you haven’t already guessed, the clue is in the ‘unwanted’ part. Unless we are actually into you (in which case we usually make it known) it’s a very uncomfortable, potentially dangerous situation to be in.

“Collab Bros”

This brings me to the collab bros. You guys must have had your fair share of collab bro offers right? Well, we never really hear ‘collab sis,’ and when we do get a collab offer it can be difficult to discern their intentions, which becomes tiring after a while and leads to us women potentially feeling isolated and ultimately deciding if we want to just make music, we’ll have to do it ourselves, by ourselves and forget about working with others - aka more pressure.

And another reason why we feel the pressure to do everything by ourselves. Answer this question as honestly as you can: If you saw a track with two names, one male and one female, who would you instinctively think produced and/or mixed the track, and who wrote/sang on it? Well congratulations if you defied stereotypes, but sadly still, most people, as well-intentioned as they are, will tend to assume the guy to be in the more technical role. This is yet more pressure on women to prove themselves, and then some. 

So What Can We Do To Make The Studio A Nicer Place To Be For Everyone?

So I guess now is a good time to shout out to all of the lovely guys and gals I have had the pleasure of working with and who are already doing a wonderful job at making the environment more inclusive, you know who you are, and thank you! 

Before I give some fairly simple and practical tips, I think the main takeaway is: 

Don’t be weird. If a woman in your industry attends your studio, messages you, hell even smiles at you, don’t immediately assume the worst (or best, depending on how you look at it). 

Gather information first and try to treat her as you would a guy in that situation, so if you see a woman sitting at the desk and she looks engrossed in a project, just assume she’s a producer or engineer and that she doesn’t need you to dictate Compression 101 to her. For the love of god don’t ask if she’s ‘the singer’ or (my favourite) turn to ask another guy, ‘Is this an actual session?’ Yeah… Don’t do that.

Some fairly simple solutions to make your studio more comfortable and inviting (which is more important than many people think).

• More female staff - bonus points if they are engineering the session.

• Clean, well-equipped space & decent toilets. If you’re thinking this is an odd tip, think again. The lack of suitable toilets and facilities in many studio environments astounds me and many others. At the bare minimum, have a clean space, a functioning lock, some paper towels, and a mirror (yes I said that), many of us women like to check we don’t have panda eyes after 6 hours of incessant screen staring.

• Be friendly. This is a no-brainer really, but a friendly vs hostile (ego trip) environment can really influence the atmosphere and not to mention the performance of the artist. Most people, not just women, want to be made to feel welcome, so a simple smile and a ‘How are you’ will be a great start. 

To Summarise

We are all here because of our love of music, we love it so much that we chose this crazy career path. As artists, producers, and engineers we thrive on creating sounds that people love, bringing out the best in each other, when we are comfortable we perform at our highest level, we are our most creative and we get fantastic results. So let’s lead with empathy, support one another and continue to make this industry a better place to be for everyone!

Photo by Jeffery Erhunse on Unsplash