Radio stations in Quebec, as in the rest of Canada, remain much more inclined to play songs by male artists than those performed by women. A reality that is observed in all radio genres, including those that primarily target a female audience.
In a recent study, two researchers from the University of Ottawa looked in particular at musical rotations in French-speaking radio stations in the “adult contemporary” format, whose target audience is women, often of a certain age. , like the Rythme and Rouge networks.
Of the 11 frequencies studied, mostly in Quebec, it turns out that songs performed only by men were over-represented in the programming in 2023. Their weight varies slightly between stations which have a more mature repertoire (61%) and those who play slightly more current titles (71%).
“We listen to artists to which we can identify,” recalls musicologist Jada Watson, who led this study. “I don’t want to fall into stereotypes. But the fact that men are also present on radio stations that mainly target women shows that women can very well identify with the world of male artists. While men are much more likely to only listen to male artists today. »
Where are the women ?
And for good reason, in stations primarily targeting a male audience, the presence of female artists on the air is often downright starving. On 18 rock stations, most of them broadcasting in English Canada, songs performed only by men took up 91% of airtime last year.
In English-speaking country stations, male artists also predominate. Approximately 77% of their musical programming in 2023 was composed of titles on which only male voices were heard, again according to data compiled by the University of Ottawa.
“It’s very shocking, because we know that there are a lot of women who sing rock and country. When we look at these statistics, we understand better why there are so few women scheduled at festivals. This is a problem in Quebec, as in the rest of Canada. For people to want to see women perform, radio stations have to make them known by playing their music,” laments Jada Watson, whose work focuses on country music and commercial radio.
Mme Watson is very interested in the place of women in the charts, but also in that of trans artists and racialized people. She actively campaigns for better inclusion in music, criticizing the industry for still being macho and “segregationist”. That said, this doctor in musicology does not believe that the right way to achieve better representation is to impose new quotas on radio, like those that currently exist for Canadian content and for French-speaking music.
“What is needed is not quotas, but in-depth work on musical programming. There needs to be awareness, and not just radios. The work must also come from labels, festivals and galas,” she maintains.
Taylor Swift Effect
As part of their research, Jada Watson and her colleague also analyzed the catalog of around twenty English-speaking “top 40” radio stations. On these frequencies where the big hits of the day, often American, are played on a loop, women were, again, mostly under-represented in the last 10 years. But there is a turnaround in the situation in 2023: these stations have given almost the same space on the air to songs by female artists as to those by male artists. Even that, among the 150 most popular songs of the year, more titles were performed by women.
“When we do a more in-depth analysis of 2023, we see that the spectacular growth in the position of women took place especially between July and December. We notice that the songs of Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift have a lot to do with it,” notes Jada Watson, who, however, does not necessarily see a lasting trend.