ROCK & POP: The gender gap

Cast your mind back, if you will, to 1984 and the group photo that accompanied Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" Looking at the sea of shoulder-pads and studiously back-combed hair, the male- female ratio is initially difficult to make out, yet closer inspection reveals a startling fact. Out of 40 artists, a mere four women participated in this supposedly ground-breaking, politically- conscious pop event. Even more dispiriting is that three of them were in Bananarama who, good as they might have looked in Lycra, were hardly flying the flag for female solidarity. The other was Shalamar's Jodie Watley.

Considering the list of celebrities (you'd be hard pushed to call them artists) chosen to take part in Band Aid 20, the 21st-century remake of "Do They Know It's Christmas?", the ratio is more respectable but by no means equal. Alongside Chris Martin, Robbie Williams, Bono, Will Young, Justin Hawkins and the singer-turned-tea- boy Damon Albarn, we have a gaggle of contemporary pop divas including Natasha Bedingfield, Jamelia, Katie Melua, Beverley Knight, Dido, Ms Dynamite, Estelle, Sugababes and Joss Stone. There are, in total, 14 women to 26 men. But it's clear from listening to the record that the lead vocals are distinctly biased towards the male singers. While Sugababes, Dido and Jamelia all get solo spots, the rest seem to be relegated to backing. All of which suggests that, within the realms of pop music, the lot of women has improved - but only a bit.

Eighties pop was, of course, an emphatically male-dominated business. With a few exceptions the role of women was principally as eye candy. This was the early days of MTV and the pop video and, within this new promotional medium, the presence of leggy blondes was practically compulsory, completing the picture of rock'n'roll excess for a self-respecting male group. "Girls on Film" by Duran Duran featured hordes of nearly-naked women frolicking on the floor and having pillow fights while Robert Palmer's unforgettable "Addicted To Love" had a bevy of identikit, mini-skirted models pretending to play instruments. The video, which became a hallmark for 1980s silliness, was to plague the Armani-clad singer for the rest of his career and led to endless parodies by the likes of French and Saunders and, even, by that bastion of feminism, Britney Spears. The Human League, the synth-pop band behind "Don't You Want Me?" and "Human" apparently weren't complete without the presence of two comely backing singers in Egyptian eyeliner. Joanne Catherall and Susan Sulley were both 17 and had to be ferried by their parents back to school after recording Top of the Pops.

It's worth noting that The Eurythmics' Annie Lennox - a woman who has been awarded more lifetime achievement awards than any other pop artist despite being 15 years away from her pension - had to dress up in a man's suit to get the attention she deserved. Indeed, despite the industry's ingrained sexism, gender-bending was positively de rigueur during the Eighties - perhaps the most feminine influence came from some heavily made-up and conspicuously stylish male stars, among them Culture Club's Boy George, Visage's Steve Strange and Marilyn.

But as the Eighties, the decade that taste forgot, wore on, the music industry gradually woke up to the marketability and malleability of young female singers. Resolving never to work with anyone over 25, the producing/songwriting team Stock, Aitken and Waterman signed up Sonia, Tiffany and Mel and Kim and, in 1986, even turned around Bananarama's flagging career with "Venus". Among their more catastrophic projects was the reinvention of the Page Three girl Samantha Fox as a pop princess - even they couldn't transform her scant talents into anything listenable - though in 1989 they redeemed themselves with Kylie Minogue. The perky Australian soap star proved an instant hit despite being memorably described by one critic as a "prancing, dancing antiseptic swab".

Yet the Eighties was also a time when a stronger, more uncompromising woman began to assert herself, particularly in America. Last week Madonna, who has arguably had a greater impact on the course of feminist culture than any social theorist, was voted by the UK Hall of Fame as the most significant artist of the era, despite the fact that she only made it big in the latter half of the decade. Cyndi Lauper was, for a while at least, unstoppable, using her rag-tag chic and hit song "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" as a call to arms for feminine self-expression and selling five million copies of her debut LP She's So Unusual.

In terms of gender, the billing of the 1985 Live Aid concert may have been as unbalanced as Band Aid but, with the exception of Queen, the stand-out performances on both sides of the Atlantic all came from women - remember Sade's breathless "Your Love is King", Madonna's hyperactive "Holiday" and Tina Turner's rip-roaring duet with Mick Jagger on "It's Only Rock'n'Roll"?

By the Nineties, things were beginning to change. In America, Riot Grrl, the sub-grunge movement that spawned a series of fiercely independent, all-girl rock bands including Babes in Toyland, Bikini Kill and L7, flirted with the mainstream while Lilith Fair, a rolling tour that featured some of the biggest female musicians of the Nineties including Sarah McLachlan, Suzanne Vega, Sheryl Crow and Tracy Chapman, was the highest grossing tour of the decade. Meanwhile Mary J Blige and Missy Elliott defied expectations and conquered the hidebound, ho-hating, male-dominated world of rap. In the UK the Spice Girls invented "girl power" and gave rise to a multitude of all- girl outfits, including All Saints, Misteeq and Sugababes. This shift in emphasis from male to female empowerment had significant repercussions. Oasis and the post-Take-That Robbie Williams were among male artists sticking two fingers up at political correctness and embracing the emergent football- loving, beer-swilling lad culture.