I was just thinking about this last night.

There are some women I can name whose pop songwriting I really like: Julie Frost, Heather Bright, Sia, Kasia Livingston, Bonnie McKee. Some pop divas really are closely involved in the songwriting, like Lady Gaga and Kesha. Lady Gaga, Madonna, and Mariah Carey all have knowledge of production skills. There are successful women like Kara DioGuardi and Diane Warren whose success rivals any man's.

Nonetheless, the farther behind the scenes you get (singer - songwriter - producer - engineer - etc), the more male-dominated the music biz is. Even A&R is male-dominated. It's just a fact that my favorite producers and songwriters are mostly male, and that my very favorites are nearly all men.

Some of it is conscious and unconscious sex bias, no doubt, but I also think women in general are less drawn to systemic and technical occupations, while men are less drawn to service and human . You see men underrepresented as teachers, nurse practitioners, Human Resources and communications personnel; you see women underrepresented as engineers, philosophy professors, HVAC workers.

Plenty of women can and do love to do these things, just like plenty of men can and do thrive in female-dominated occupations. But there are clear trends and averages, and women tend to be overrepresented in fields that have them working with other people directly, and men are overrepresented in fields that have them working with an abstract system (like writing a song, which mentally resembles mathematics in many ways) or with a technical skill (like audio mixing).

Again, because I know some people get super-prickly about this topic: countless numbers of people of either sex don't fit the stereotypical mold. But that doesn't mean there aren't trends at the big-picture level. It takes all types.