Looking at Rolling Stone’s top 50 guitarists it isn’t entirely surprising to see that there are no women on the list. On a whole it is reasonable to say that rock music is gendered male. Bayton says ‘women performers have predominantly been vocalists rather than instrumentalists’’. I agree with this statement and it is much easier to name a female vocalist than it is to name a female drummer. It’s hard to pinpoint a definite answer as to why this tends to be the case, but one theory is that if you grow up being a fan of rock music and aspire to play an instrument, the people you are looking up to are most likely men. But for women, there aren’t as many females in that position to look up too. If there were more Joan Jett’s out there to inspire women to play an instrument, maybe the genre would be more level.
The conclusion that there are less female role models in rock is a reasonable one but it does rather beg the question, what are sociological reasons for this?
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