Revisiting Women and the Electric Guitar: Why the Research Needs to be Updated and Expanded
Abstract
This article investigates the state of the research on women and the electric guitar and argues that there is a strong need for further research in this area. Existing scholarship primarily focuses on factors that inhibit women from playing the electric guitar, is mostly centered on offline/pre-Internet women and guitar relations and tends to link the electric guitar with masculinity and male sexuality and characterize it as a male-dominated practice. This means that the reasons why women do play the electric guitar are not given much attention, the Internet’s impact on women’s guitar practice is largely omitted, and other ways of approaching the relationship between gender and the electric guitar are given minimal consideration. I argue that all of these aspects are vital for better understanding women and the electric guitar, and for advancing the cause of gender equality in music and are therefore in urgent need of further research.Downloads
References
Auslander, P. (2004). I Wanna Be Your Man: Suzi Quatro’s Musical Androgyny. Popular Music, 23(1), 1-16.
Bayton, M. (1997). Women and the Electric Guitar. In S. Whiteley (Ed.). Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender (pp. 37-49). London: Routledge.
Bennett, A. and Dawe, K. (Eds). (2001). Guitar Cultures. Oxford: Berg.
Berkers, P. and Schaap, J. (2015). YouTube as a Virtual Springboard: Circumventing Gender Dynamics in Offline and Online Metal Music Careers. Metal Music Studies, 1(3), 303-318.
Bigham, D. J. (2013). Hearing Connections: An Actor-Network Study of Online Guitar Activities. (Ph.D. thesis). University of California, San Diego, United States.
Born, G. and Devine, K. (2015). Music Technology, Gender, and Class: Digitization, Educational and Social Change in Britain. Twentieth-Century Music, 12(2), 135-172.
Bourdage, M. (2010). ‘A Young Girls Dream’: Examining the Barriers Facing Female Electric Guitarists. IASPM Journal, 1(1), 1-16.
Choi, G. Y. (2017). ‘Who Run the Music? Girls!’ Examining the Construction of Female Digital Musicians’ Online Presence. Popular Music and Society, 40(4), 474-487.
Clawson, M. A. (1999). Masculinity and Skill Acquisition in the Adolescent Rock Band. Popular Music, 18(1), 99-114.
Cohen, S. (2001). Popular Music, Gender and Sexuality. In S. Frith, W. Straw and J. Street (Eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (pp. 226-242). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Connell, R.W. (2005). Masculinities (2nd. Ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Connell, R.W. and Messerschmidt, J.W. (2005). Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept. Gender & Society, 19(6), 829-859.
Consalvo, M. (2002). Cyberfeminism. In S. Jones (Ed.). Encyclopedia of New Media (pp. 109–110). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. SAGE.
Crespo, A. (2010). Girl Guitars: Negotiating Gender through Instrument Design, Mediation, and Use. (MA Thesis). Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
De Lauretis, T. (1987). Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Evans, T. and Evans, M. A. (1977). Guitars: Music, History, Construction and Players from the Renaissance to Rock. New York: Facts on File.
çEverett, H. (2003). ‘The Association That I Have with This Guitar Is My Life’: The Guitar as Artifact and Symbol. Popular Music & Society, 26(3), 331-350.
Fourie, J. (2020). Gender, Rock and the Electric Guitar: A Post-Structural Reading. (MMus Thesis). Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa.
Frith, S. and McRobbie, A. (1990 [1978]). Rock and Sexuality. In S. Frith and A. Goodwin (Eds.). On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word (pp. 317-332). London: Routledge.
Gaar, G. G. (1992). She’s a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll (2nd Ed.). New York: Seal Press.
Haley, R. (2007). Sizing Up the Guitar Classroom. The Canadian Music Educator, 49(2), 50-51.
Hallam, S., Rogers, L. and Creech, A. (2008). Gender Differences in Musical Instrument Choice. International Journal of Music Education, 26, 7-19.
Herbst, J.-P. and Menze, J. (2021). Gear Acquisition Syndrome: Consumption of Instruments and Technology in Popular Music. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield Press.
Hochman-Ruiz, S. J. (2016). Disorienting Guitar Practice: An Alternative Archive. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 33(1), 95-108.
Kearney, M. C. (2017). Gender and Rock. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kelly, P. (2009). Gender Identity and the Electric Guitar in Heavy Metal Music. Maynooth Musicology: Postgraduate Journal, 2, 251-280.
Laurin, H. (2006). Gender Representations in the Gizzy Guitar 2005 Air Guitar Competition. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 21(3), 284-303.
Lee, D. (November, 19, 2020). A Calamity of Janes (Or Lack Thereof): Observations of a Gender Crisis in Guitar Communities [Papper]. Florida Educational Research Association Virtual Forum: Educational Research in Urgent Times. University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida.
Leibetseder, D. (2012). Queer Tracks Subversive Strategies in Rock and Pop Music. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Leonard, M. (2017 [2007]). Gender in the Music Industry: Rock, Discourse and Girl Power. London: Routledge.
Luckman, S. (1999). (En) Gendering the Digital Body: Feminism and the Internet. Hecate, 25(2), 36-48.
Marone, V. and Rodriguez, R. C. (2019). ‘What’s So Awesome with YouTube’: Learning Music with Social Media Celebrities. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 9(4), e201928.
Matabane, M. I. (2014). Axe to Grind: A Cultural History of Black Women Musicians on the Acoustic and Electric Guitar in the United States. (PhD thesis). Emory University, Atlanta, United States.
McSwain, R. (1995). The Power of the Electric Guitar. Popular Music & Society, 19(4), 21-40.
Millard, A. and McSwain, R. (2004). The Guitar Hero. In A. Millard (Ed.). The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon (pp. 143-162). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
O’Brien, L. (2002). She Bop II: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul. London: Continuum.
Plant, S. (1995). “Babes in the Net.” New Statesman & Society, 8(337), 28.
Rogerson-Berry, M. (2020). St. Vincent: Postmodern Guitar Hero. Popular Music and Society, 1-16.
Ruismäki, H., Juvonen, A. and Lehtonen, K. (2012). The Internet as a Learning Environment in Guitar Playing: Rane’s Search for Information and Expertise. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 45, 381-390.
Strohm, J. (2004). Women Guitarists: Gender Issues in Alternative Rock. In A. Millard (Ed.). The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon (pp. 181-200). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Strong, C. and Raine, S. (2018). Gender Politics in the Music Industry. IASPM@Journal, 8(1), 2–8. Doi: https://doi.org/10.5429/2079-3871.
Turrill, A. R. (2006). Shred Chicks: Gender and Identity in Female Guitar Players. (MA Thesis). University of Maryland, College Park, United States.
Vesey, A. (2020). Room for a Breast or Two: St. Vincent and the Post-Structural Feminism of ‘Friendly Instrument’ Design. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 32(4), 37-59.
Waksman, S. (2001). Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
