While the popular narrative has it that women are currently dominating the Grammy Awards, research suggests that this is far from the case.
A new report, The Missing Voices of Women in Music and Music News, says that, while women have achieved significant recent success in the headline categories - last year saw Taylor Swift win Album of the Year, Miley Cyrus win Record of the Year, Billie Eilish scoop Song of the Year and Victoria Monét being named Best New Artist - the reality is that, between 2017 and 2024, women received only one in five of the Grammy nominations and wins.
And, while many of the headlines last year focused on how women had “dominated” or “ruled” at the Grammys, the reality is that, in total, fewer than one in four nominees (24%) and one in three winners (32%) were women.
In fact, while news reports focused on the fact that women took home the big four aforementioned awards, if you factor in all the Grammys given out in these categories - including for songwriters, producers, engineers and mixers - only 22% went to women, with the remaining 78% going to men.
In the case of Taylor Swift’s winning Midnights album, for example, 11 Grammys went to men and only two to women. And while six men took home awards for Record of the Year Flowers, Miley Cyrus herself - who was both singer and one of the songwriters - was the only female winner.
In the Grammy Producer of the Year category, in the past eight years only 3% of the nominations have gone to women.
Report author Luba Kassova says of her findings: “Frequently the media trumpet women dominating the Grammys. So I was shocked to discover the reality: women have never even reached a third of nominations or wins in any given year. Far from dominating, their position in the awards overall is in fact peripheral. This report investigates this discrepancy between the facts and what is communicated to the public.”
Turning to the 2025 Grammy nominations, the report tells us that women have received their highest number of nominations for nine years - 1,101 across the 94 categories. However, this is still only 28% of the total, with 69% going to men. Despite this disparity, a lot of the pre-awards focus has been on how many women are nominated in the top categories, with many news outlets framing it as the year in which Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are competing for multiple prizes.
“Going forward, I would love reporting on this issue to fully align with reality,” says Kassova. “The Recording Academy’s greatest contribution to this would be to open up its database of nominations and winners for gender analysis and clearly state women’s representation across all categories in its press releases.
“For their part, the news media need to delve deeper, fact-checking press releases and asking investigative questions to uncover the true state of women’s success. When parity is achieved, I’ll be the first to celebrate. But whatever the headlines, right now, this is premature.”
You can read the full report here. The 2025 Grammy Awards take place this Sunday, 2 February.
