What is the connection between renowned varied names like Janet Jackson, Lauryn Hill, and Mariah Carey? They’re three of the only six women who have been nominated for the Producer of the Year award in the entire 59-year history of the Grammys.
Very few people give consideration to the producer, who spend enormous amounts of time and effort before the song comes out. Producers are the backbone of the song. They make sure that every detail of the song sounds clear and crisp to the audience. They make relevant changes in the lyrics, music notes and even artists to deliver high-quality end products.
“There’s usually a 20- to 25-year period of time when women enter a field before they become proficient, and then the equalisation happens. With audio, women started entering the field in the ’70s and ’80s. Now we’re in the 2010s, and there are quite a lot of women.” These were the words of Trina Shoemaker, a mixer, record producer and sound engineer who became the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album: Non-Classical, after 39 years of the said award’s existence. This serves as a testament to the deep-rooted patriarchy hindering the growth of women producers in the music industry which has always traditionally been a male-dominated industry. Although singers like Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Beyonce regularly top music charts around the world with their foot-tapping music, the ones responsible for the creative process behind the production and mixing of such music is still male-dominated.
The work environment, in general, is not conducive to a woman’s growth, both socially and professionally. On the rare occasion that women do manage to break through the rampant sexism which is widely prevalent in the music production industry, they are almost always pressured into teaming up with well- known producers to survive in the ruthless music industry. Research conducted showed women preferred more non-technical music careers while men chose technical ones. This is reflected in music schools around the world where the ratio of girls to boys in the STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) departments is extremely poor. Some argue that the reason behind this is that since childhood girls aren’t exposed to tools and games involving building things that resulted in their disinterest. Another school of thought suggests that the feasibility of this job subjects women to tremendous societal pressure, including familial obligations. The overall working conditions in the music business, typically involve long, unsociable hours which become more of a difficulty when women become mothers and have to balance their family life with work.
Despite the odds stacked up against them, women composers throughout history defiantly continued to follow their passion. Consequently, they shattered the glass ceiling, paving the way for women composers in the future.
In 1912, English composer, Ethel Smyth dedicated herself to create the anthem for the suffrage movement ‘March of the Women’. When she was thrown into jail for protesting against a cabinet minister who was against women’s voting rights, she was seen at the window frantically conducting a rendition of the same anthem with a toothbrush.
In 1850, French composer and piano professor Louise Farrenc demanded the Paris Conservatory for equal pay after being paid a fraction of the salary as compared to her male peers for over a decade. Her request was granted and is now symbolic to a battle many women are still fighting for today.
Unfortunately, these women were recognised for their achievements and legacy long after they had passed away. Hildegard of Bingen, in the 12th century was one of the few composers of her time to have left written versions of her work. She had her name written in the stars when asteroid ‘898-Hildegard’ was christened for her in 1918. Similarly, Venezuelan composer and music conductor Teresa Carreño (1853-1917) was memorialised with a crater on Venus that shares her surname.
The production industry, however, laid more or less barren of female touch until recording engineer Mary Shipman Howard arrived at the scene in 1940. Turned down from an engineering job at NBC studios since they didn’t hire women engineers at the time, she settled for being a secretary making her the only woman in the studio, up until the second world war when they promoted her to an engineer due to shortage of staff. Later she went on to become the first American woman to own and operate a recording studio paving the way for dynamic change.
Another underrated visionary who created a name for herself in this field was Polish producer Marianna Sankiewicz-Budzyńska, a survivor of torturous labour camps in Poland during the second world war. She later went onto study engineering, and in 1995, she became the vice- president of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) in Central Europe. She was awarded an AES Citation and Fellowship award.
Cordell Jackson broke all conventional norms by becoming a ballgown-wearing producer and guitarist aka “Rock’ n’ Roll Granny,”. She founded her own production company Moon Records in 1956 to release her recordings as well as those of other Memphis-based rock & roll artists. She is considered to be the first woman to produce, engineer, arrange and promote music on her own using her living room as a studio.
Ethel Gabriel was a pioneer: the first female record producer for popular music. In her 40-year career, she produced over 2500 albums, won 6 Grammy Awards and earned 15 Gold Records. She worked with leading artists like Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton.
Despite their path-breaking work, even in the 20th-century female producers, mixers, engineers, designers, and editors are sparse, and the ones who do exist are overlooked continuously and discounted. Women currently occupy less than 5% of music engineering and production. However, this statistic fails to regard the hidden talent unable to step on the platform due to a broad spectrum of underlying socially detrimental phenomena. So is the case of Tiffany Hendren. A sound engineer who faced similar obstructions as she was rejected from several jobs on account of being a woman and one such instance was due to the discomfort expressed from the band members’ wives for being the only woman on their bus tour. This is just one example of such ludicrous behaviour towards lesser-known female producers.
She isn’t the only one alone in this battle. Women who have accomplished fame in their line of work too have faced unwarranted complications. Emily Lazar, a mastering engineer, nominated for three Grammys said, “If you did not just go along with a lot of the behaviour, you would at least be excluded from sessions, and your position threatened.” 4-time Grammy nominee Linda Perry, singer-songwriter, musician and record producer who’s worked with some of the biggest names in this industry emerged a pioneer in this field despite her struggles with addiction, kidney disease and a revolting past filled with abuse.
WondaGurl, a Canadian music producer explained how spending all her time as a kid working on her music limited her social skills and resulted in her social anxiety.
Jennifer Lee aka Tokimonsta recalls in an interview sexist remarks she’s had to bear, with people attributing her success to her male associates along with ignorant racist comments. Her degrading health too impacted her career putting a halt in it when she couldn’t make music as she strove to recover from an incurable disease called moyamoya with two brain surgeries and loss of speech for a brief period.
Dani Deahl, a DJ and music producer spoke up about her experiences of sexual harassment when she was publicly groped by a peer on a DJ booth with negligible regard from his side on confrontation about the topic along with false accusations of inappropriate trysts with her promoters being the sole reason for her bookings.
War, another debilitating environment tormenting its victims only strengthened Fatima Al Qadiri, a Kuwaiti producer whose songs evolved from her experience of the gulf war. In her words she claims the period of invasion birthed the unique modern imagery in her songs.
Merril Nisker who also goes by her stage name Peaches is a Jewish bisexual musician, producer and director. She faced constant criticism for her bold portrayal of various taboos that she tried to counter through her songs. Growing up she also faced antisemitism with kids continually bullying her. The album ‘The Teaches of Peaches’ which she released after her battle with cancer and an ongoing heartbreak was proclaimed a feministic classic.
In the face of such challenging times, there always have and always will be producers who try to create more viable opportunities for women from different backgrounds. Producer Mollie Gregory who in the wake of the ’70s when women were raising their voices to the radical beat of Second-wave feminism, released an album, ‘Virgo Rising: The Once and Future Woman’ in support of the movement which was performed, engineered and produced by women. Just like her in the present day and age, Kiran Gandhi, popularly known as Madame Gandhi, an electronic music producer and drummer uses her music as a liberal channel to propagate feminism. Each song from the remix version of her album Voices EP was produced by women of varied ethnicities. Media and books too are adding onto the momentum like Leslie Gaston- Bird, another producer who in her book, ‘Women of Audio’ wrote about the history of female music producers and the changing dynamic of female contribution in audio production throughout the years. Various other organisations started by women have begun to promote this vast-growing field amongst young girls like Women’s Audio Mission(WAM), Women Produce Music, Tape Op magazine and many more, all with an aim to increase inclusion of budding female producers in this male-dominated domain.
More female producers are emerging now, especially in the genres of dance and electronica—although the pop scene, where the charts are still dominated by manufactured bands, has a lot of catching up to do. There are many underrated women composers in the underground pop scene which will hopefully become more mainstream in the years to come.
Written by Crew Members- Shrijani and Snigdha Deshmukh
Artwork by Crew Member- Shramidha Srivastava
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