Bringing together leading experts in the field of gender and popular music, this collection emphasizes the ways we can shape our personal understandings of what gender is or could be in the music industry. Popular music contains multiple sites of exploration of masculinity, femininity and combinations of these. At the same time, however, the popular music industries remain sites of gender inequality, with men dominating power structures, maintaining ‘boys’ clubs’ that lock women and gender diverse folks out of music spaces and networks, and police access to genres and instruments. At worst, music can be dangerous for those involved due to gender-based violence. These problems in turn lead to new types of creativity and solidarity as people search for solutions and a more egalitarian music experience. This handbook presents a multi-faceted exploration of how gender shapes our musical experiences, whether as audiences, artists or music industry workers, taking an intersectional approach that incorporates perspectives from different sites, genres and subject positions within music making.
