Don't know if any of you know this, but a woman has NEVER topped the Pitchfork Year-End Albums list. NEVER.

A woman has only won the annual Pazz & Jop Poll once this decade.

Let's play hypothetically for a bit - if a woman were to have released My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, or channel ORANGE, or Black Messiah, or To Pimp a Butterfly - do you think she would have been as rapturously received critically?

Why or why not? Is unconscious sexism/gendered thinking at the root of this?

What can we do to change things?

I think women in the music industry in general are seen more as sex objects than quality musicians.

Obviously there is a small portion that focuses on quality, but in general their image is stigmatized.

I think there are a number of things that come into play with women --the lesser known, less commercially successful female acts seem to get their due from the critics, yet success doesn't seem to affect how they treat the male artists at all -- there's still some bias there too of course, but it's not the extremes that we see in the mainstream. I think that there truly is something to be said about the way critics will score moderately to highly successful male artists as opposed to moderately to highly successful female artists. That's where the bulk of the bias clearly comes into play.

What can we do to change things?


We can stop caring about male dominated media like Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Pazz & Jop. #boycottsexistpublications

But even those "lesser known, less commercially successful female acts" get screwed! What exactly made channel ORANGE better than The Idler Wheel? Why was Yeezus "better" than BEYONCé? Why did w h o k i l l by tUnE-yArDs chart at number one on P&J but not even close to that on Pitchfork's 2011 list? Going back a few years, how was Kanye rewarded for his ambition for MBDTF and Joanna Newsom not hailed as the year's best for Ys, one of the most audacious records of the century?

Basically, why do critics exhibit such extreme bias in favor of men?

Women arent taken seriously as musicians and its sad

Well, to be fair, some songs sound better on a male voice than a female voice and vice versa.

Do you really think if Mariah Carey - Emotions was released by a male artist, his voice would sound good on it? Her feminine voice can add a huge amount to a song. Males and females have different sounding voices and different notes they can hit - no amount of feminism can change that... it's just the way it is.

There also aren't any females killing it in the rap game right now. Nicki Minaj is too gimmicky and resorts to pop music too often to be respected as a rapper, and besides Nicki, there aren't any relevant female rappers right now (well there's Iggy, but that's another story).

People are really here for things like Nicki Minaj - Monster (Verse), I think if a female rapper consistently released content like that, they would receive huge acclaim.

T6 on MC's roundup of critics' t10 lists:
2015 Grimes & Courtney Barnett
2014 St Vincent, FKA twigs, Taylor Swift
2013 Lorde & HAIM
2012 Fiona Apple & Grimes
2011 PJ Harvey, Adele, Tune-Yards, St. Vincent
2010 Janelle Monae...Beach House is a duo with the female doing the vocals.
So not horribly inequitable.

Most of the ones listed in the OP are popular rappers, and there are few popular female rappers.

I guess Kendrick & Kanye have their acclaim equivalents in Grimes & St Vincent. But the general public and then the industry doesn't use them too much, so they can be overlooked.

This isn't just limited to music. The same thing happens with films and TV. I'm becoming more inclined to think straight men (which most critics are) aren't willing to listen to what a female voice (literally and figuratively) is about, leading to a bias.

Gaga is. She's had AOTY 3 times, all her albums are green on metacritic and she's about to add an Oscar to her shelf of Grammys, BRITs and Golden Globes.

CFDA fashion Icon, Song Writers HoF, WOTY, etc.

I'd say that women tend to make music that is less respectable (pop, dance, bubblegum, etc.) and it gets panned based on the genre.

Yeezus was terrible and exactly one of the albums I had in mind when I made that post. There's absolutely a gap with the indie and lesser known ladies; however, it's nowhere near as exaggerated as the gap with how they treat the major act. But yeah, they get screwed over, too. The glass ceiling is real for us and it's everywhere.

Ezra, pls. Not every thread has to be about your fave.

Because men are threatened by a women power.

I don't know whether to warn this shockingly off-topic post for disruptive (really wish we had "stanning" as a warning category back) or just delete it. Any thoughts?

Image affects everything and females will always be docked for inadvertent sexuality, especially the ones who surround that sexuality with controversial statements. It's a trade-off to gain impact over critical acclaim, and it's considerably more important to go with impact than pandering to critics.

Hounds of love gets as much praise as any 80s album and that's from a woman. There aren't many female artists with the clout of a Dylan, Beatles, ect. You can call it oppression, but very few objectively were ever on that level musically. Kate Bush, Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell are probably the only ones. The only female album that's as good as some of the greatest male rock albums are probably Hounds Of Love, Blue and Homogenic.

Someone also mentioned if the critic response to MBDTF and CO be the same if a female released them? My answer is yes, they would be.

Shouldn't have asked the question if you didn't want anyone to disagree.

The point is: women are respected in music and one little pazz and jop poll or list doesn't make them disrespected. Maybe in rap but not broadly. Gaga, Beyonce, Taylor, Madonna etc. are all examples.

That user's post was actually on topic, though. They made it all about Gaga due to the fact that Gaga is their fave and obviously would be able to name a lot of receipts about Gaga alone due to having the most knowledge about her (more than other female singers).

The 'stanning' doesn't detract from the fact that Gaga is a highly acclaimed female.

S/he doesn't seem to get it, just delete them all & threadban her/him.

Popstars are sexualizing music too much, hence why they are not as respected as males.
I mean even this