The Women Issue

Yeah, yeah…. You knew we were eventually going to get to this.

Here we go: There aren’t enough women Inductees.

In one category, they are shut out almost entirely: The Award for Musical Excellence, formerly Sidemen. It might as well still be called Sidemen, because only one Sidewoman— Patty Scialfa, a member of the E Street Band (which, first, should have been inducted as Performers with Springsteen or at least by itself in 2012 along with several other “backing bands” that got full Induction)— is in.

I can think of many women who deserve to be here. If you can’t, please watch the documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom. And then see the 2008 doc The Wrecking Crew and meet Carol Kaye. In any case, there are many women who have backed big-deal acts in the studio and on tour for decades, often as singers but even as musicians (like bassist Kaye). It should be easy to find dozens of worthy candidates, and yet here we are, and here they aren’t.

The next most glaring category in this regard is the Ertegun (Non-Performers) Award.  There are 50 winners (as of 2020), all of three of whom are women. And all of those are inducted alongside a man… and as part of a songwriting duo: Mann and Weil, Goffin and King, Greenwich and Barry. Not as “producers, disc jockeys, record executives, journalists and other industry professional(s).” Even though women have, um, been those things.

Yes, this reflects the sausage-fest reality of the music industry. No, you can’t award who’s not there. Yes, it’s hardly the fault of the award that this has been the sad history of the industry.

But come on. Since 1986, there haven’t been one or two women “producers, disc jockeys, record executives, journalists [or] other industry professional(s)” deemed worthy of the award? Even looking back at the entire history of rock, which goes back some 70 years at this point?

None? Zero? Zilch?

Early Influences, you’re next. Seven out of 33. We’re talking about performers from, more or less, the 1920s to the early 1950s. Guess what? Women were performing back then, too. In all the genres that fed into rock. But only a fifth of these Inductees are female acts. Even accounting for the sexism of those days, they should be around 40%, not 20%, of this category.

OK, now for the Performers. There have been other websites crunching the figures here, but I’m going to take a different approach, closer to the Bechdel Test for women in movies.

We’re going to see if there are any years in which more than two women got inducted as Performers in the same year:

In 1988, three women got in, but all were Supremes, so three women but one act got in.

1998 (ten years later): Four women in two acts; this time each act (Fleetwood Mac, The Mamas and the Papas) had two women.

The following year, 1999, The Staples Singers made for three of the four women who got in, so still two acts.

That also happened in 2007 (eight years later). Four women got in…but three were Ronettes, so again only two acts.

And in 2013, three women got inducted in the same year. Two were in the same band (Heart). So three women, but again only two acts.

So… did it ever happen that three or more different acts, each one with female members, got inducted in the same year?

Yes. Once. In 1996— after 10 years of inductions… and not since, in almost 25 more years of inductions.

In that year, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Grace Slick (with Jefferson Airplane), Maureen Tucker (with Velvet Underground) and all four Shirelles were inducted. So, seven women inducted as Performers in one year..!

Along with 19 men.

I found at least nine years in which no female Performers were inducted at all. There were zero years in which no male Performers were inducted at all.

Have men simply been the ones more “allowed” to make music in all that time? Maybe. But… given all the music that gets in? I mean, think about how wide a variety we are talking about here, from disco to punk, from folk to rap.

Women are slightly more than half the population. Given the historic sexism of the music industry, maybe allowances have to be made. You can’t award someone who wasn’t there.

But to say that there are simply no women worth inducting in some years? And only one or two the rest of the time? Impossible.

There are many lists online of women who are both eligible and deserving. In 2021, everyone who dropped their first album in or before 1996 will be eligible, Maybe not enough women were making records in the very early days (which I doubt), but by the mid-1960s, they had likely caught up. At this point, there is really no excuse. There aren’t enough women Inductees.

“When you know better, do better,” said a great singer (and poet, and author…), Maya Angelou. So, Rock Hall… do better.

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/15/796717978/41-women-who-should-be-in-the-rock-roll-hall-of-fame

Update: They did better! 

In 2021, three different acts with women were Inducted as Performers: The Go-Go's, Tina Tuner (solo this time) and Carole King (both solo this time and as Performer this time). Several other women were nominated, as well.

In 2022, four different acts with women in them were Inducted as Performers: Pat Benatar, Dolly Parton (yes, really!), the Eurythmics with Annie Lennox, and Carly Simon. Additionally, folkie Elizabeth Cotten got in as an Early Influence and there was even a women winning the Ertegun-- Sylvia Robinson. 

This is very gratifying and heartening. Keep it up! 

2023 was another banner year for women: as Performers, Kate Bush (after several tries), Sheryl Crow and Missy Elliott. None in the other categories, but three women with very different styles all in one year should be the norm.