Women have been actively involved in music as long as men, but their participation was kept behind closed doors until 18th century. Although significant changes were made until today, music industry is still run by men. The image of patriarchal culture about the role of women in music importantly affects sexual representation regarding individual genres of popular music. My Master’s thesis researches participation of women in four genres of popular music; rock, pop, electronic dance music, and jazz. As part of popular culture, popular music reflects what is happening in the society which is why I researched the history of women in music and the patriarchal theory itself before breaking it down to individual genres. This is also the basis for the empirical part of the thesis where I was determining the ratio between women and men in individual genres according to the number of songs/albums on the Billboard chart. Once I analysed the acquired results, I checked my initial hypotheses and came to the conclusion that there are fewer women in rock and jazz genres since they do not conform with the patriarchal image about the role of women, and that more women are active in pop and in electronic music since the role of women in these genres conforms with the image of patriarchal culture about the role of women.
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