Celebrating Women in Music All Year Long

PEOPLE, the Recording Academy and Sephora are teaming up ahead of the Grammys to amplify the voices of women on the mic and behind the scenes

Women in music have come a long way, but they still have quite a ways to go.

Though this year, nominations for women dominate some of the biggest categories at the Grammy Awards (including Album Of The Year, Record Of The Year and Song Of The Year), many of those nominated superstar female singers still talk openly about how difficult it can be to have their ideas heard and be taken seriously. (There's a reason why Taylor Swift performs "The Man" on her Eras Tour!)

As the numbers in 2023's annual USC Annenberg study on diversity in music show, only 30% of songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart are by women (low, but better than past years).

That means there's still lots of room to grow when it comes to inclusion for the songwriters, sound mixers and engineers — not to mention touring musicians, producers, stage crew and more — who wish to achieve success at the level of their male counterparts. And the Recording Academy is undertaking a major project to ensure women in music finally get their due.

After getting feedback that the Recording Academy could lead the charge to elevate the stature of women in the industry facing obstacles to success, they launched several initiatives to help improve the inequality and add more on-ramps to success.

One of the first programs launched to address this issue was their "Women In The Mix" pledge, which asked chart-topping artists to pledge to consider at least two women when hiring an engineer or producer; they also pledged donations towards organizations dedicated to getting girls involved with music, and pledged to double the female representation in their voting body by 2025, to 2,500 women (they're 98% of the way there).

They also take findings from their commissioned Women In The Mix study to help launch further offerings to increase women's visibility and inclusion, an initiative that PEOPLE and Sephora are partnering with the Recording Academy on in 2024 and beyond.

As part of PEOPLE and the Recording Academy's year-round commitment to highlighting the achievements of women in music, we're partnering with Sephora to kick off Grammys season with a Celebration of Women In The Mix event, totally dedicated to amplifying the voices and profile of women in all sectors of the recording industry.

And beyond that, we will be featuring the stories of these powerful, accomplished and inspiring women at PEOPLE as part of our Women In The Mix spotlight. We hope to be a platform not only for awareness, but also for real change to the limiting factors highlighted in the Women In The Mix study, which included pay, lack of mentorship and an inability to achieve work/life balance.

Read on for stories of some of the most impactful Women In The Mix.

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Read the original article on People.