Bringing together leading experts in the field of gender and popular music, this collection emphasizes the ways we can shape our personal understandings of what gender is or could be in the music industry.

Popular music contains multiple sites of exploration of masculinity, femininity and combinations of these. At the same time, however, the popular music industries remain sites of gender inequality, with men dominating power structures, maintaining 'boys' clubs' that lock women and gender diverse folks out of music spaces and networks, and police access to genres and instruments. At worst, music can be dangerous for those involved due to gender-based violence. These problems in turn lead to new types of creativity and solidarity as people search for solutions and a more egalitarian music experience. This handbook presents a multi-faceted exploration of how gender shapes our musical experiences, whether as audiences, artists or music industry workers, taking an intersectional approach that incorporates perspectives from different sites, genres and subject positions within music making.

Catherine Strong is Associate Professor in the Music Industry program at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. Among her publications Towards Gender Equality in the Music Industry: Education, Practice and Strategies for Change (co-editor, Bloomsbury 2019) and Death and the Rock Star (co-editor, 2015).

Sarah Raine is an SFI-IRC Pathway Fellow in the School of Music, University College Dublin, Ireland, and the PI of a four-year funded project. She is author of Authenticity and Belonging in the Northern Soul Scene (2020) and co-editor of Towards Gender Equality in the Music Industry (Bloomsbury, 2019) as well as the co-Managing Editor of Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music.

Sharon Kong-Perring is a PhD Candidate at Birmingham City University, UK, researching Anglophone K-Pop fandoms and audiences. She is a historian-museum professional-academic by day and journalist by night, researching cultural experiences around the world. She is the co-editor of Riffs Popular Music Journal's first special edition on Asian/Oceanic popular music.

Tami Gadir is Lecturer in Music Industry at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Gadir's research addresses the social and political mechanisms of musical life. Her book, Dance Music: A Feminist Account of an Ordinary Culture (Bloomsbury, 2023) uses gender to show how dance floors are a reflection of the social dynamics that exist in ordinary life.