In this quote, Girlschoolâs rhythm guitarist and vocalist Kim McAuliffe observes a lack of women in metal music production in the 1980s. She regrets that back then her band did not (yet) function as a role model for women wanting to enter metal music as musicians. However, according to her, the number of women has increased recently. In an interview in The Wall Street Journal, metal music scholar Deena Weinstein echoed this observation, stating that âMetal today is definitely not a boysâ clubâ (Shah, 2016). In this chapter, we will discuss the longitudinal trends and cross-national differences in participation of women in metal music production. We will first address womenâs participation in metal music, as recorded in the âhistory booksâ. Yet, this rather subjective history of women in metal music only addresses women who have managed to receive some form of recognition, and those from the global centre of the world of metal â Western Europe and North America. To provide a more representative overview, our analyses on gender inequality in metal also include more amateur, grassroots production as well as music produced in other parts of the world.
A HISTORY OF WOMEN IN METAL MUSIC PRODUCTION
To explain why metal music is both numerically and symbolically dominated by men, we need to trace back the history of women in metal music. Due to the absence of comprehensive academic history books, we will draw on Herron-Wheelerâs (2014) self-published booklet, Wicked Women: Women in Metal from the 1960s to Now, as well as on various additional sources. While it is not our intention to provide an exhaustive history on the entire subject, we do aim to provide some historical context to our study of women in metal production, sketch some of the boundaries they have run into and introduce potential role models.
Arguably, the first woman in metal was Esther, âJinxâ, Dawson (Indianapolis, 1950), the founder and singer of Coven. She was trained in classical music and âborn into the occultâ (Tweedle, n.d.). Preceding their 1969 debut Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls (Mercury), Coven opened up for Alice Cooper, the Yardbirds and Vanilla Fudge. Their sound can best be described as heavy rock, with a strong emphasis on diabolical subject matter. The influence of Coven can be seen in the music of bands that followed â for example, famous rock critic Lester Bangs (1970) referred to Black Sabbath as âsomething like Englandâs answer to Covenâ. However, women such as Jinx Dawson â despite predating Black Sabbathâs self-titled debut â rarely make it into the canon of rock music (Dawes, 2015; Strong, 2011). Indeed, neither Louder than Hell (Wiederhorn & Turman, 2013) nor Aardschokâs Hard Rock en Heavy Metal Encyclopedie (Van den Heuvel, 1989) â a leading Dutch metal magazine â even mention Coven. Moreover, Dawson was an exception to the masculine rule of metal. Almost all heavy metal bands copied Black Sabbathâs all male model (Herron-Wheeler, 2014). According to Jinx Dawson, these bands probably could not picture a woman leading a heavy metal band (Herron-Wheeler, 2014) as it opposes dominant notions of femininity in society in general and metal in particular.
As heavy metal evolved into the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, developing into a distinct genre, most bands remained all-male and genre conventions became hypermasculine (Walser, 1993). Despite all of this, one of the first all-women metal bands was formed in 1975: Girlschool (at that point still called Painted Lady). After being invited by Lemmy Kilmister to join Motörheadâs 1979 tour, they recorded their debut album, Demolition (Bronze), and landed several Top 10 hits. Guitarist and vocalist Kelly Johnson also appeared on the cover of Guitar Player magazine in 1983, something few women had achieved until then (Herron-Wheeler, 2014). While most lyrics on Demolition addressed traditional occult-inspired metal tropes, some songs discussed issues of gender. For example, Not for Sale was âabout women being used to sell carsâ (Bryan, 2015). In the early days of metal, being an all-women band came with a whole set of stereotypes (Stewart-Panko, 2016), with which such bands often still have to deal with.
According to Girlschool bassist Enid Williams:
(âŠ) a few years back, we wanted to play a festival in Scandinavia that, in the past, we had gone down very well at. The manager we had at the time was also managing another all-female band who were booked to play the same festival. The organisers turned around and said to him, about us, âOh, no, weâve already got our female band.â And thatâs in Scandinavia where half the government are women and itâs generally pretty good for gender equality!
As thrash metal grew popular in the 1980s, several women took to the stage, such as Ann Boleyn (Hellion), Katherine Thomas (The Great Kat) and Sabina Classen (Holy Moses). Classen is considered to be âthe very first growling and extreme music woman in metalâ (Canella, 2012), the Mama aller BrĂŒlltanten (Zwingelberg, 2014). Classen, and women singing in a similar style, are often described as women who can growl like men (Chaker & Heesch, 2016). On the one hand, this evaluation confirms strong masculinist codes in metal; these women âdoâ masculinity, positioning this type of singing as non-feminine behaviour. On the other hand, it conveys respect for doing masculinity successfully (Hecker, 2016, p. 155).
In the early and mid-2000s, bands like Within Temptation, Nightwish and Evanescence scored international chart hits. These bands are fronted by women who sing in an operatic style, and whose voices are in the soprano or Âmezzo-soprano range (Herron-Wheeler, 2014). As such, they have been genre-classified as âfemale-fronted metalâ. While some bands â like La-Ventura â have argued that âfemale-fronted seems to be hot at the moment, so why not use it to our advantage?â (Carpenter, 2015); many others have widely criticised this approach to this gender classification. First, gender marking â explicitly labelling a genre âfemaleâ â has been critiqued as sexism, by either reversing such marking or by marking everyÂthing (Brekhus, 1998). As an example of reverse marking, one metal critic writes in reference to female-fronted metal: âweâve started referring to bands as âmale-backedâ just to confuse everyoneâ (Arthur, 2017). As an example of marking everything, Thrashhits (2013), in their article âTop 6: Ways Metal Treats Women Really Badlyâ, discusses female-fronted metal as a separate genre by including other markings: âAnd because it would be totally acceptable to call Disturbed âJewish-fronted metalâ and Suffocation âblack guitaristed death metalâ, Wait, what?â Second, the genre âfemale-frontedâ metal is critiqued as an accentuation effect (Berkers, Janssen, & Verboord, 2014). In other words, bands with female singers are placed into this genre based on gender similarities, ignoring differences in musical style (Chapstick, 2018). Floor Jansen (Nightwish) argued for the ending of gender-based categorising for this exact reason:
Arch Enemy is a female-fronted metal band, but so is Delain. They donât sound alike at all. The only thing they both are, are metal bands, but the style within metal is so massively different that it doesnât really say much whether thereâs a girl singing or not. So itâs really not so important. Plus, to emphasize the difference in sex between men and women, I think weâve had that time by now. (Blabbermouth, 2015)
This admittedly subjective history of women in metal music only addresses the tip of the iceberg, excluding (1) women who have not received substantial commercial, critical and/or peer recognition and (2) women outside the global centre of the world of metal â Western Europe and North America. Our analyses on gender inequality in metal, however, also include more amateur, grassroots production as well as music produced in other parts of the world.