Gender and the Billboard Top 40 Charts between 1997 and 2007

In this paper, we examine the gender-related trends on the Billboard Top 40 charts between 1997 and 2007. Building on similar statistical studies (Wells, “Women in Popular Music,” “Women on the Pop Charts,” “Nationality”) our study aims to answer two questions: first, does the number of hit songs by male artists continue to exceed the number of hit songs by female artists as we move from the late 1990s into the early post-millennium; and, second, are women's chart success rates in the late 1990s and the early post-millennium as precarious as they were in the 1980s and the early to mid-1990s?1 Taking frequency and success score distributions as our indicators, we conclude that the Top 40 charts continue to be characterized by considerable gender inequality.

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