This book addresses an important theme of scholarship on music, one that has substantial ramifications for the creators of music: gender bias in music production. As with many important topics of research, it is hard to study. Even though the last couple of decades have seen an increasing awareness of the problems of gender inequality, there is still a considerable need for research that formulates good questions and which develops thorough answers. The book, Women in the Studio: Creativity, Control, and Gender in Popular Music Sound Production, offers numerous reflections on the problem, asks many questions and suggests several answers concerning the roots and forms of gender bias in music production.

To give unequivocal and exhaustive analyses on such a complex theme is difficult, and the agenda proposed by the author in the introduction of the book is not one that aims to reduce the complexity: ‘I interrogate the influence of the construction of music production as a gendered arena of creativity, technical expertise and control on our understanding of the practice itself and also on our understanding of its contribution to the construction of highly gendered career-building frameworks for a number of professions within the music industry’ (p. 2). This is one of several ambitious declarations of intention, among which this is emphasised: ‘My overall intention, therefore, is to offer a close examination of the situation of female practitioners in music production, with a particular focus on the growth of self-production practices among female artists, in order to assess whether that growth has the potential to significantly challenge what I demonstrate are deeply rooted consequences of the historic and contemporaneous male domination in the broader field’ (p. 7). The rise of self-production practices among female artists is a highly interesting topic of investigation that could comprise exactly how such practices evolve. The book also engages in a lot more, however, thereby offering a broad range of insights but also running the risk of reducing the focus of the inquiry.

One of the strengths of the book is its conveyance of diverse aspects of working in a male-dominated industry. In Chapter 1, the author uses her extensive artist experience to convey how trade bodies in the UK have addressed this thorny but increasingly unavoidable issue. It presents a recognisable history of growing awareness, reflected in frustrated artist statements at industry events as well as in growing numbers of music sector surveys and policy documents. It appears to have amounted to a state of ambivalence, oscillating between optimism (related to new opportunities of self-production) and pessimism (related to the continued male dominance of key positions). This kind of frustration extends to the last chapter, which deals with representations of gender in the media and starts with this quote: ‘If I was Queen, I would ban the use of gender before the job title, I would ban female singer song-writer’ (p. 151). The representation of women in the extensive apparatus that conveys and interprets artists and their music is obviously crucial for careers and long-term opportunities. This is arguably a theme that deserves its own book, however, and here detracts from what this reviewer assumed to be the main objective of this book, which is to capture the experience of women in the studio, be it the studio of others or their own.

Chapters 2 and 3 give accurate accounts of the routes into professional studio work, as well as obstacles along the way. Key factors are the networks of like-minded (and like-gendered) mentors and role-models, education (formal and informal), technological set-ups and the work forms of the industry, which the author relates not only to gender but also to class and ethnicity. Compelling explanations are suggested regarding the causes and consequences of gender bias, supported by quotes of experienced artists and industry professionals. Fascinating accounts are given of how the use of new technology has enabled artists to find their own sound and develop artistic confidence. Despite the merits of these chapters, however, the causes, consequences and cases that are presented appear as a somewhat compiled body of analytical opportunities, rather than exhausted areas of research. They might have been expanded by fully exploiting the artists’ sources on their studio experience, possibly at the expense of the fourth chapter which is on the rise of new distribution platforms (where the gender dimension is not so clear anyway). The way artists encounter the studio technology and the gender-related challenges of mastering various interfaces and their associated competencies are topics worthy of further examination. This curiosity easily extends further, for instance into the status and awareness of gender among the developers of studio software and hardware, thereby indicating how challenging it is to limit a book exploring music and gender. Given this challenge, Women in the Studio: Creativity, Control, and Gender in Popular Music Sound Production offers a valuable and comprehensive contribution that features perspectives and inroads that the author as well as others can continue to explore further.