Misogyny in music: ‘We need to look at all structures around abusers’

The UK Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee has been holding an inquiry into misogyny in music. We covered one of its hearings in September 2023, and then the committee’s report in January 2024, which offered strong criticism of the music industry.

“Women working in the music industry face limitations in opportunity, a lack of support, gender discrimination and sexual harassment and assault as well as the persistent issue of unequal pay in a sector dominated by self-employment and gendered power imbalances,” was its headline conclusion.

“Despite increases in representation, these issues are endemic and are intensified for women faced with intersectional barriers, particularly racial discrimination.”

As is the way of these inquiries, follow-up hearings have been held, including a pair of sessions yesterday. Here’s our report on the first, which heard evidence from Black Lives in Music CEO Dr Charisse Beaumont; musicians Celeste Waite and Lucy Cox; and The Guardian’s deputy music editor Laura Snapes.

The hearing started with a question about why women find it difficult to speak out about any harassment and bullying that they encounter in the music industry.

“It’s a very small world, and I think that it’s been normalised that misogyny and bullying are taking place in the industry all the time,” said Cox, who is a freelance soprano singer.

She related experiences ranging from being told “I’d have to wait for somebody to get pregnant or die before I’d get any work” to being asked by a man “if I’d performed a sex act on the conductor to get the solo” [in a particular concert].

“This sort of sets the tone as to what’s going on. When you’re starting out in your twenties and that’s what is normal, it becomes very difficult to challenge it, because everybody’s laughing about it, and you find yourself laughing along, and then you’re complicit and suddenly it becomes impossible to speak out,” said Cox.

‘Only a small amount of reports lead to real action’

Beaumont drew on BLiM’s research to illustrate the challenges.

“When people feel uneasy about speaking out, it’s because they have a lot to risk. they have to risk their careers, their reputation, their mortgages on their house. They’ll lose work… Why risk everything for something where you may not believed? I think this is the root of what we’re saying here as regards to reporting,” she said.

BLiM’s studies have found that only 29% of women who experience bullying and harassment make an official report, but that in many cases there is no action, and it may even negatively affect their careers.

“In most instances, as Lucy shared, the perpetrators are protected, and in many cases because they’re protected they’re able to continue their harmful behaviour,” she said. “Only a small amount of reports lead to real action.”

Snapes suggested that bullying and harassment are “perhaps more endemic to how so much business is done and how relationships are structured”, noting that many cases happen in isolated situations: between a musician and a producer for example, or backstage at a live event.

“It’s not like something’s happening in your office and all your colleagues witness it,” she said. “If someone complains about something that happens behind closed doors, it can easily be dismissed as a misunderstanding, or chalked up to ‘tricky interpersonal relations’, or perhaps worse the artist being ‘difficult’ and not understanding how things work,” added Snapes.

Waite said that the nature of music-making and the industry around it – including those isolated moments and relationships – may be a magnet for people who want to exploit that.

“It encourages people who are already having ill intentions, whether that’s in their personal life or in their professional life, to see a system in which they are able to take advantage of that,” she said, pointing to the “grey areas” in professional environments that are also social environments – concerts for example – where drugs and alcohol are present.

“Those kinds of environments that have grey areas are allowing certain people to take advantage over people that they can see are potentially more vulnerable,” she said.

‘I think there’s structural facilitation’

A question about whether the music industry will have a ‘MeToo Moment’ comparable to the film industry led Snapes to suggest this may be a misleading thing to hope for.

“To keep thinking about there being some kind of future moment, as it were, is a bit distorting and distracting,” she said, pointing to the ongoing case involving actor Blake Lively, as well as the mainstreaming of misogynist views more generally in recent years, as evidence of “the backlash to the MeToo movement, and to the idea that alleged abusers should face consequences for wrongdoing”.

“I don’t think we’re going to get a [MeToo] moment in music, and I don’t think we should be waiting for one either. I think it’s a little bit passive and maybe limited to perceive the problem as something that one day might explode, rather than as a sort of ongoing process of ensuring safety and respect, as well as appropriate consequences and justice for wrongdoing, which we could act on now,” she added.

Snapes would like to see record labels creating codes of conduct to be signed by everyone who is working on a given project; for HR departments to be robust and also willing to outsource difficult situations to independent bodies to avoid conflicts of interest; for equality to be prioritised at every level of the business; and for recording sessions to be recorded in case the footage is ever needed for alleged incidents.

But it’s also a wider challenge to tackle. “Misogyny is more of a societal plague than I can ever remember it being in my lifetime. And I think robust education for young people and young men on equality, respect, consent, and debunking so-called gender norms about who’s best suited to what kind of job is what has to happen in schools as a matter of urgency, or nothing will ever ever change,” she said.

Cox noted the “known perpetrators in the classical music industry… at at the moment, there is no incentive for these people not to behave like that. Nobody’s holding them to account. there’s no way of getting justice. You risk being sued if you if you start speaking out about people. And it’s very difficult to know how to avoid these situations.”

“They’re being enabled in so many different ways. I think there’s structural facilitation,” agreed Beaumont, citing the case of Cassie Ventura and P Diddy, which only gathered momentum when video footage emerged showing him attacking her.

“It took for us to see a video to believe her. I think people need to be believed immediately,” said Beaumont, addressing the politicians on the committee.

“You’ve got this this panel. You had loads of panels over the last year, thousands of pieces of evidence, women saying this is happening, being reported… yet were not believed. And I think the general sentiment for people that are in the industry who are reporting is there’s a frustration that we spoke and not enough is being done about bullying and harassment.”

‘I’ve also been asked by a man not to cross my legs’

Beaumont also criticised the music industry’s culture of NDAs when they are applied to allegations of bullying and harassment.

“NDAs are complicated, but where you’re cloaking crime… it’s a crime! I think NDAs shouldn’t be used. They’re being misused to protect perpetrators. It has become a distrusted weapon and has a negative impact, particularly when misused to suppress and shield misconduct and exploit power imbalances,” she said.

“NDAs ethically depend on the context and how they implement it, but right now, it allows the powerful people to bully, to stifle, and block the truth from being known. And we need to look at all structures around abusers and give them no place to hide.”

The hearing also discussed pressure on women in the music industry over their appearance, at both ends of the spectrum.

“I’ve heard of girls being told either to cover up because they don’t look sophisticated enough if, you know, parts of their body are showing,” said Waite.

“And then I’ve heard it on the other hand where people are given certain items of clothing by a stylist that’s somewhat under the influence of people in a position of power around them, or perhaps people that may be funding some of that public appearance. And they’re not feeling very comfortable or content with the options that they’re given because they feel maybe it’s showing their body in a way they don’t feel comfortable with.”

“I have worked for choirs where they specify that they prefer us to have a v neck [top], which which I find odd,” added Cox. “And the thing about being asked to cover up: not being allowed to bare shoulders is something that comes up. I’ve also been asked by a man not to cross my legs which, again, is not not acceptable, is it?”

Beaumont talked about the challenges Black women face in the music industry, citing BLiM data showing that 42% of all women felt pressured to change their appearance to be more sexualised, and that this pressure is higher on Black artists.

“When we speak to the Black women in our community, many of the women that we survey and speak with believe as a community we are being sexualised. Black women are being sexualised and being objectified,” she said.

“The industry chooses to put most of its money into rappers and singers who feel they can portray an image that will bring down the Black community. These artists’ lyrics are hyper-sexual. I feel like Black creators are more supported if they push a self-destructive narrative.”

“Black female female-artist rappers in particular speak more about overtly sexual topics and carrying themselves in the manner that brings them down… if kids on their mobile phones are constantly bombarded with sexual images of Black women looking this way, what do you think is gonna happen?”

‘There is a toxic expectation around Black women’s bodies’

Waite agreed. “I do feel like there is a portrayal of Black women in the mainstream that is overtly sexualised. And I do feel that there perhaps is a pattern where you’re seeing the women that are getting the support and then are also able to kind of then reach this grand scale, are the ones that take on this certain image,” she said.

“And I do think that there is a toxic expectation around Black women’s bodies, which over time has kind of progressed into women having to take potentially dangerous and invasive surgical procedures or extreme beauty trends to achieve this image.”

Beaumont took up this theme. “Before everybody started get started to have cosmetic surgeries, BBLs [Brazilian Butt Lifts] and everything else, we were seeing certain megastars – I won’t mention them because I do respect them – but certain megastars having them first,” she said.

“So when we saw those megastars and we were, like, puzzled as to why do they look this way? Why do they look like Barbie dolls as Black female artists? Bleached skin, massive bums, massive chest. And now we’re seeing how that’s impacting society, and we’re seeing young girls being pressured regardless of their background to do that stuff,” continued Beaumont.

“I feel that’s how powerful and impactful that this music industry is. And that’s why we need to uncover it and clean it out: make some real good changes.”

Snapes noted that when women artists have full control over their image, it is a different, more positive story.

“If you look at somebody like Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter or Rihanna, I think that it is very possible and realistic that a woman with power over her image may also choose to present herself in a sexualised way, and that’s on her terms,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to be necessarily a negative thing. I think it’s important for women to be able to embody their sexuality. I don’t think we should see a sexualised image as necessarily bad as long as the person portraying it has control over it, as opposed to it being handed down to them by a record label or management.”

‘A culture of women not really speaking to women’

The conversation moved on to some of the daily challenges that women artists face beyond bullying and harassment, but which may enable those things through isolation.

“The kinds of prejudices that you can face on a daily basis within the music industry are people perhaps second-guessing your ideas, feeling that you’ve realised that you’ve said the same thing maybe five times over five or six different meetings,” said Waite.

“And quite often, you experience a lot of comparison to other female artists that perhaps there is no real reason for comparison based on your expression, or your style of music, or your style of writing. The comparison is made purely on a visual basis alone,” she added.

“So for myself, I’ll quite often hear comparison with other biracial female artists around my age, and, I think that kind of encourages a culture of women not really speaking to women within the music industry, which is such a shame. I think that we need to be able to feel that we can speak to one another so that we can also act in protecting one another.”

One positive trend is that there are now more women in leadership roles within the music industry, at individual companies as well as industry bodies. Beaumont said that this in turn leads to faster change.

“We have 110 industry partners – organisational partners – and it’s the ones that have women at the helm that we see do the deep-rooted work,” she said.

“They’re the ones that are diversifying the makeup of the organizations. They’re the ones that are taking EDI [equality, diversity and inclusion] seriously. They’re the ones that are creating pathways for people to come through: particularly for women to come through.”

However, Beaumont drew attention to the greater challenges facing Black women within the music industry, based on BLiM’s research.

“Black women are the most disadvantaged in the music industry. They’re paid the least. They’re paid 52% less than white men, 17% less than Black men, 25% less than white women.
They, experience racism at a rate of 89%,” she said.

“Our data says that 41% of Black women working in music industry have seen their mental health decline… and they were the first to go when it was time for the industry to do [job] cuts both here and in America. They are the least valued in the music industry.”

‘There’s a lot of things that aren’t spoken about’

The hearing also heard evidence about challenges around maternity, menstruation and the menopause, with Cox citing conversations that made her feel “you’ve ended your job by having a child”.

Meanwhile, the UK’s maternity allowance for self-employed people is “inadequate, especially given the cost-of-living crisis. There was no way that I could have survived on that: I ended up working until I was about 37 weeks pregnant”.

Cox said that one of the challenges concerns silence within the classical music sector, at least publicly.

“There’s a lot of things that aren’t spoken about in relation to hormones, in relation to periods, and how that can affect your singing, and how that can affect your ability to perform on other instruments. Menopause isn’t really spoken about. That can affect the voice. Our bodies are different to men’s bodies as hormones go,” she said.

“And and I think there’s a vulnerability there. If we take a sick day, we we we miss a gig, we don’t get paid, somebody else comes along and does that work and quite often will take over from you entirely. And there’s no incentive for the people who are employing us to be sympathetic or to book us again.”

“So what happens is that women end up coming back to work far too soon after having children. They end up pushing through horrible period pains or, feeling ill because they’re going through the the menopause… and there’s no recourse for them.”

Snapes talked about another issue within the non-classical sector relating to the previous discussion about sexualisation.

“Very often after a female musician, particularly a pop star, has a baby… Suddenly, they’ll be seen as, you know, DOA. Nobody could possibly be interested any more because a woman who has a baby is deeply undesirable, as it were,” she said. “It’s perceived that being a pop star is all about, the appearance of being available and desirable to other people, and again, it comes down to how much power you have.”

“Beyonce has a number of children, and she can present that as part of her overall artistic package, and nobody’s taking that away from her,” continued Snapes. “But the lower you go down the power scale within the industry, the more I think many women would find, particularly in the pop area, that they’re sort of cast aside when they go through that process.”