Share the Air: A Study of Gender Representation on Canadian Radio

Women are almost invisible on some radio formats in Canada, according to an extensive study by Dr. Jada Watson through her research program SongData. Share the Air: A Study of Gender Representation on Canadian Radio (2013-2023) was prepared in collaboration with Eugénie Tessier and in partnership with the National Arts Centre and Women in Music Canada.

Gender representation in popular music has long been a topic of conversation within the North American industry, with Canadian women playing a major role on an international stage in highlighting these issues. Perhaps most notable is the work of singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan who in 1997 built the community-oriented Lilith Fair concert tour to spotlight women. Launched in response to a decades’ old practice of radio and concert programmers refusing to feature two women in a row (on station playlists and on stages), McLachlan brought together women from across all genres and proved to the industry that women could fill venues, sell albums, and do so alongside (back-to-back) all while championing each other. Two decades later, the conversation is unfolding again. Artists have been speaking out about the lack of women on festival stages, addressing the absence of women in production and engineering roles, and the decline of women in Juno nominations. Numerous studies and articles have emerged on the absence of women across festivals and award nominations in the Canadian music industry, but radio – one of the oldest and most established pathways to distribution and exposure – has received limited attention.

Share the Air: A Study of Gender Representation on Canadian Radio (2013-2023) aims to address this gap and focuses on radio as an entry point to discovery and exposure within the industry and examines gender representation across six radio formats in Canada. Taking an intersectional approach, this study investigates the rate of airplay for songs songs played between 2013 and 2023 to consider how often their songs are played across the national Country, Alternative Rock, Active Rock, Top 40, Mainstream Adult Contemporary, and Hot Adult Contemporary radio formats.

This study was supported by Creative BC and the Province of British Columbia

Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ontario Creates or the Government of Ontario or of Creative BC or the Government of British Columbia. The Government of Ontario and the Province of British Columbia and their agencies are in no way bound by the recommendations contained in this document.