I don’t know squat about modern music, so I was a little surprised to see the latest stats on the number of women who write popular music. In short, there are hardly any:
![](https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/blog_aii_female_songwriters.gif)
![](https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/blog_aii_top_songwriters.jpg)
The figures for 2019 are worse for producers (5 percent female) but a bit better for performers (22.5 percent female).
There’s more here in the full Annenberg report. I do have one comment about all this: I’ve heard of all but two of the top women songwriters but I’ve only heard of one of the men. This is mostly a commentary on my dismal knowledge of contemporary music, but I wonder why that is?