Boy Progress Radio?
So, I’ve been working on updating the Artists page here at BPR, and I realized that our artists are heavily skewed to Asian American men.
We have 24 different artists/groups listed we have*:
- 1 compilasian album that is mixed gender
- 2 solo artists that are women
- 4 groups that feature both men and women
- 19 groups or artists that feature men (though some have lots of people involved, and guests, the main artists seem to be just men)
So what’s going on? Is this a reflection of the BPR staff? (Severely lacking in estrogen. Wanna pitch in?) Or is this a reflection of independent Asian American music? Have stereotypes about Asian American women affected who attempts to go into the entertainment industry? Is it just because there aren’t any female Asian American drummers besides Lane Kim? Or do Asian American men just rock?
What do you think?
* If my math is off, please let me know. If I’m overlooking people or making assumptions about people’s gender identity, I apologize. The main point is that we have a lot of male artists.
Last 5 posts by delia
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Tags: Commentary.
6 comments
I have to think a bit more about whether the gender distribution of the artists on BPR is representative of the overall Asian American musician population. Maybe some research will be necessary before this question can be answered.
Is it possible that independent of race there are just simply more male groups than there are female groups? I don’t have time to determine the ratio of male rock groups to female rock groups, but that would be an interesting data point. And then, it would be useful to determine if the ratio of Asian American male groups to female groups is statistically significant relative to that ratio.
Just a thought.
i would say that the lack of gender diversity in music artists reflects something…maybe the lack of gender diversity among contributors, but not the scene in general. because off the top of my head i can think of half a dozen asian american women who we don’t have their music – some never responded to an initial inquiry, some we may just have no connection with, some…eh, who knows?
but i hope that anyone who knows artists – man or woman or whatever – who isn’t on BPR as of now could think about letting them know about getting at us. the more the more better.
Hmm… that’s good if it is true. A related question might be, why were the males more prompt in their response to our inquiries? Why were the men responding and not the women? Is it us? Are we intimidating? Man… if that’s the case, I’m going to have to re-evaluate myself.
[...] in the early days of Boston Progress Radio, Delia noted the gender imbalance of the artists on our station. (Yeah, I know that was only a few months ago, but sometimes it seems [...]
it’s great that you’re evaluating yourselves from time to time. coming from a female perspective, i don’t think intimidation would be a factor (unless you have no manners and you sound threatening). but if you want to test out that theory, maybe you could ask more female volunteers to contact female artists and see how the responses go.
I can name a lot of Asian-American women artists that aren’t on your list as well. But I can name more men.
I’m a female solo artist who’s queer, and although the conservative Chinese community I grew up in urges me to “stay out of trouble”, “get a real job”, “find a husband who values demureness”, and “do something more traditional”, I was essentially raised by the queer progressive community which pushed me to think outside the box, speak my mind, and use my art as a tool for expression. So in that way, I feel blessed, or else my passion may have been squashed at an early age.
I think men have less of these expectations. Not to say they don’t have expectations, but I often think that my brothers had more free range to do as they please than I did, for example.
Sexism in the media is very apparent. (Of course I’m really not talking about BPR here, I know it really tries to incorporate more women, but with less success that we’d like to see.) Kit says that the slam scene is still mostly white and male. I’m not surprised.
In mainstream media, you can be a hideous man and still be heard and loved (50 cent, anyone?) but for a woman, if you’re not dazzlingly beautiful or have a perfect body, then your demo gets tossed even without a listen. Why would any woman feel encouraged to be artists in this society?