RUNNING THE WORLD
Themes
After analysing the tracks, we picked out themes that were represented across the years.
The trend of how prevalent these themes are is represented in the following charts.
"Stereotyping" is defined as a perpetuation of whatever is commonly seen as "expected" of a gender.
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An example would be in Don't Let Me Down's lyrics, which portray the female singer as weak and hapless.
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The number of songs which glorify negative stereotypes have been on a steady and gradual rise from 2013 to 2016.
For the purposes of the analysis, we defined "female sexualisation" as perpetuating the theory of the Male Gaze by putting certain "sexual" aspects of a woman into focus.
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An example would be in Timber, which featured a rather sexually revealing music video.
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The number of songs which sexualise women has been fluctuating from 2013 to 2016.
"Objectification" is defined as the reduction of a woman to only her physical body.
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A stark example is Blurred Lines, the music video of which shows women being used as stands and tables.
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The number of songs which objectify women has remained relatively constant from 2013 to 2016.
"Gender inequality" can be seen when people of different genders wear different clothes, for example. For the purpose of the project, "gender inequality" is only counted when the man is shown as superior to the woman. If the woman is superior to the man, it is put under "Female empowerment" (below).
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An example is in Love Me Like You Do, where the woman is submissive to the man.
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The trend of gender equality has been fluctuating, with a spike in the year 2015.
The definition of "raunch culture" (Levy, 2005) can be seen in the "Feminist Theories" section of this webpage.
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An example of a song to perpetuate raunch culture is Needed Me, which features a brothel with several prostitutes.
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The number of songs to perpetuate raunch culture has had a few fluctuations between 2013 to 2016.
"Power structures" could either be empowering or misogynistic, depending on the context. Any song that puts a man and a woman in an implied hierarchy is counted. If the roles are reversed such that the woman is in power, it would be empowering.
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An example is in Needed Me's music video, where Rihanna assumes the role of a powerful female character who puts herself ahead of men.
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2015 is the only year with more than 2 songs with a visible power structure.
An "empowering" song may promote body positivity, portray the female character(s) as complicated personalities or gifted beyond their physical assets, or otherwise show the female character(s) as powerful or superior to their male counterparts.
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An example is All About That Bass, one of the most well-known body-positivity anthems of the century.
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The trend of empowering songs has remained relatively stable with few fluctuations.
"Gender equality" is achieved when characters of both genders are portrayed fairly and in a similar way to each other. Equality can be seen when both genders are shown as flawed in their own ways, or if neither gender is pigeonholed into a stereotype.
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Songs like Cheap Thrills keep relatively neutral. Love Yourself's video shows a turbulent relationship where neither person seems to be outwardly blamed. Both are counted as "equal" in portraying the genders.
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We see that 2014 did the worst in this aspect, while 2015 did the best. This may imply that, as society progresses, musicians are more likely to seek equality in their music.
CONCLUSION
What reasons are there for gender inequality?
A major reason for gender inequality, specifically objectification and sexualisation, is to attract viewership. While Male Gaze and Raunch Culture make it obvious that women are objectified, men are often overlooked. From our findings there has been objectification of the male gender as well, such as in Work From Home (Fifth Harmony, 2016) and Boys (Charli XCX, 2017) where muscular men are used as props and eye candy. This indicates a shift in objectification, which still makes it problematic.
What are the common themes transmitted by today's popular songs?
One significant theme would Stereotyping, which shows a steady increase from 2013 to 2016 among songs. Female sexualisation also stagnated from 2014 to 2016. The degree of objectification has remained rather consistent throughout the 4-year period. It can be concluded that there has been little improvement in gender equality in music.
A possible reason for this is because misogynistic songs are able to create more buzz online, which brings us to this quote.. A very clear example would be Blurred Lines (Robin Thicke, 2013), which has garnered a lot of attention due to it's shockingly misogynistic content.
We believe that a majority of the recent popular songs portray the genders unequally, therefore resulting in misogynistic content.
While the majority of our analysed songs fall under "Neutral", which goes against the thesis, it cannot be denied that the number of misogynistic tracks outnumbers the number of empowering tracks. And, when we factor in the themes, we see that the misogynistic songs have the potential to do more damage than the empowering songs are able to make up for.
We have also seen that often, songs put down a social group to empower someone, like in All About That Bass (2014) where thin women are put down to empower larger women, or in When I Was Your Man (2013), where Mars indirectly puts down women while ironically trying to empower them.
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In conclusion, there is indeed a general unequal portrayal of the genders arising from misogynistic content.