3 ms·

> culture of inequity in country music I think the article needs to describe the population of overall songs to support this claim. What is the percentage of m

> culture of inequity in country music I think the article needs to describe the population of overall songs to support this claim. What is the percentage of men, women, mixed gender, transgender, sexual orientation, and race? Are there many top 40 hits for country music songs performed by women? Or by LGBTQIA’s? This seems like a simple comparison before claiming inquity. The closest is when they talk about a peak of female sung songs of 33% and a valley of 11%. But what’s the overall and what is the breakdown of songs that are likely to be played? There aren’t many black country music singers so I think a station playing few songs is actually quite equitable. Same for sexual orientation. I don’t think that it’s very smart to spread overall total population characteristics over a specific non-random selection. Just because there are 0.0% songs played by lgbtqia country artists doesn’t mean it’s a lack of equity. Popularity is not equitable by definition since it tends to focus attention on a few acts (Matthew principle in effect [0]) so it seems odd to talk about such a thing without more context and detail. Just because the population is 50% female doesn’t mean that 50% of country songs should be sung by women or that 50% of country music radio stations will be women. There is bound to be variation just because country music isn’t the same as the overall population. I wouldn’t say that the Tony awards is inequitable because the gender and sexual orientation of nominees and viewers doesn’t match the national demographics. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

bobthepanda 3y ago
I think that these are valid points. I also think that, in context, this is not exactly surprising. Country has been political for a while, a fair amount of people have been blackballed from country like the Chicks (nee. the Dixie chicks), and performers who don’t align with conservative values in country get a lot of heat (e.g. Kacey Musgraves, Beyonce performing at the CMAs): https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/culture/2016/11/4/13521928/beyonce-cma-awards-controversy-deleted-performance https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/culture/2016/11/4/13521928/... And the entire notion of ‘equity’ is the current notion of ‘woke’ for others.
- prepend 3y ago
  I agree that country music is more conservative. But what does that have to do with gender of singers? Are conservative men more likely to sing country songs? Or not listen to women singers? Or are there more men that listen to country music. I expect that conservative people are also split 50% women just like most other large groups.
  - orwin 3y ago
    It's not a 50% split, not in my contry at least. I just checked the internet and it doesn't seem to be a 50% split in the US either [0]. And all that Twitter/public partisanship seems (at least to me) even more skewed against women, whether it's right wing or left-wing. And more authoritative right, it's between 5 and 10% (but women in those groups seemed to have a lot of power a few years ago). Here the source is 'trust me bro', but I used to be in an antifa surveillance group. We documented privately people going to far right meeting/exercises, some of us infiltrated the groups, and if the information was interesting, contacted journalist with the information (the last big 'revelation' about neonazis in the French army was from a group similar to mine). The 90/10 split male/female friends is what we noticed in meetings (in bars it was 95/5). Which was weird because it roughly matched the street occupation groups like LJG (watch groups were close to 50/50). [0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/120839/women-likely-democrats-regardless-age.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/120839/women-likely-democrats-r...
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    The kind of macho patriotism present in country is pretty masculine, so it does somewhat limit the topics that women can sing about and be popular for.

bobthepanda 3y ago

I think that these are valid points. I also think that, in context, this is not exactly surprising. Country has been political for a while, a fair amount of people have been blackballed from country like the Chicks (nee. the Dixie chicks), and performers who don’t align with conservative values in country get a lot of heat (e.g. Kacey Musgraves, Beyonce performing at the CMAs): https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/culture/2016/11/4/13521928/beyonce-cma-awards-controversy-deleted-performance https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/culture/2016/11/4/13521928/... And the entire notion of ‘equity’ is the current notion of ‘woke’ for others.

prepend 3y ago
I agree that country music is more conservative. But what does that have to do with gender of singers? Are conservative men more likely to sing country songs? Or not listen to women singers? Or are there more men that listen to country music. I expect that conservative people are also split 50% women just like most other large groups.
- orwin 3y ago
  It's not a 50% split, not in my contry at least. I just checked the internet and it doesn't seem to be a 50% split in the US either [0]. And all that Twitter/public partisanship seems (at least to me) even more skewed against women, whether it's right wing or left-wing. And more authoritative right, it's between 5 and 10% (but women in those groups seemed to have a lot of power a few years ago). Here the source is 'trust me bro', but I used to be in an antifa surveillance group. We documented privately people going to far right meeting/exercises, some of us infiltrated the groups, and if the information was interesting, contacted journalist with the information (the last big 'revelation' about neonazis in the French army was from a group similar to mine). The 90/10 split male/female friends is what we noticed in meetings (in bars it was 95/5). Which was weird because it roughly matched the street occupation groups like LJG (watch groups were close to 50/50). [0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/120839/women-likely-democrats-regardless-age.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/120839/women-likely-democrats-r...
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  The kind of macho patriotism present in country is pretty masculine, so it does somewhat limit the topics that women can sing about and be popular for.