Gender inequality in electronic music explored in new book, Minor Keys

Gender inequality within the electronic music industry will be explored in a new book, Minor Keys, written by Samantha Parsley.

Available to buy from 9th October 2025, the text looks at the challenges facing women in a club scene dominated by “bro culture”. Based on six years of extensive research, interviews with 63 artists in countries across the world is included.

According to the publisher, Bristol University Press, “the book tackles common myths around gender, technology and cultural production head on, introducing the concept of ‘ameliorative work’ to recognise the continual and considerable additional work that minoritised genders do in order to succeed.” 

You can pre-order the book here. 

The author, Parsley, has been a DJ for more than five years following decades as a clubber. In 2014 she began speaking with artists to learn about their working lives, and the project become In the Key circa 2022. The directory and platform now champions the careers of women, trans and non-binary electronic music producers

Successive studies have identified huge gender bias in electronic music. In 2022, BBC Radio DJ and tastemaker Jaguar published the report, Progressing Gender Representation in UK Dance Music, which found just 5% of club tracks in the national charts were exclusively made by female or non-binary artists. 

Meanwhile, less than 1% of the top 200 airplay singles in 2020-21 across 12 radio stations were made by women and non-binary musicians. A similar situation has been identified in the US, with 2023’s Fix The Mix study identifying “pitifully low numbers” of non-males working in audio production and engineering roles — only 3% of Billboard Hot 100 songs were credited to women in a 12 month period.