Anyone following the news coverage of the Grammys ahead of Sunday’s ceremony cannot fail to have noticed the extraordinary focus on Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and other female artists who led the nominations for best album, record, song and new artist. Speculation abounded about women being set for success after dominating this year’s Grammy nominations and inevitably headlines have followed proclaiming that Grammys were all about the “girls”. The almost unavoidable assumption is that men are being outranked by women in Grammys recognition, being increasingly towered over by triumphant women musicians.
However, reasonable as this assumption may be, it is far from the truth. Men are not ranking lower than women in the recognition stakes. They are in fact dominating. Whether by accident or design, men have often been out of the news media’s focus. Female musicians on the other hand have been enjoying disproportionate media attention, accruing overly concentrated coverage of their Grammy nominations and wins. More specifically, a handful of female superstars have received the lion’s share of news attention, which consequently has masked men’s dominance at the Grammys.
According to AKAS’ year-long data-led investigation of over 9,700 Grammy nominations and over 2,200 wins between 2017 and 2025 which I wrote about in the groundbreaking The Missing Voices of Women in Music and Music News report, men have consistently dominated the Grammys in the last nine years in terms of both nominations and wins. This year was no exception.
Here are nine ways men have reigned over the Grammys.
1. 2025 Grammy nominations. 7 in 10 (69.5%) of over 1,120 Grammy nominations given across 94 Grammy categories this year were awarded to men. This proportion was marginally higher than in 2024 when men received 68% of all nominations.
2. 2025 Grammy wins. This year men won 6 in 10 (61%) of Grammys across all 94 categories while women won 37%. Whilst this is the highest level of recognition women have ever achieved, they are still significantly outnumbered by men.
3. Nominations and wins in the last nine years. Achieving 76.5% of all Grammy nominations and 76% of wins across 103 categories between 2017 and 2025, men have unquestionably reigned over the Grammys in the last nine years. By contrast, women have been nominated for and won only 1 in 5 Grammys in that period.
4. This year’s nominations for the top four Grammy awards. Men received 8 in 10 (79%) of the 2025 nominations across the four most prestigious Grammy categories (album, record and song of the year and best new artist) despite the limelight continually falling on the 20% who were women fronting these four awards.
5. Winners of the top four Grammy awards. Although we barely saw any of them on stage last night, men were awarded 91% of the awards in the prestigious album, record and song of the year and best new artist categories. 20 of the 22 recipients of the Grammys for album, song and record of the year were men. We only saw Kendrick Lamar receiving his Grammys for record and song of the year. The remaining 19 men remained out of camera focus.
6. Beyoncé and 12 men won album of the year. Beyoncé, who finally won album of the year, was one of 13 winners who received a Grammy for this award. The remaining winners are all men. It turns out that it takes a village of male producers, engineers, songwriters and mixers to raise a female superstar.
7. Producer of the year, non-classical. Since its introduction in 1975, the prestigious award for producer of the year, non-classical, has been awarded exclusively to men; 52 men to be precise. Furthermore, in all that time, only ten women (4%) have even been nominated for this coveted award. This year Alissia lost out to Daniel Nigro.
8. Recording Academy voting members. The inaugural Recording Academy 2024 Membership report revealed that two thirds of the voting members (66%) in the Recording Academy, who are responsible for awarding the Grammys, are indeed men.
9. Grammy telecast executive producers. All three executive producers, Ben Winston, Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins, who put together the female star-studded Grammys telecast were men.
What has become abundantly clear to me after a year of pouring over thousands of points of evidence is that women are at the forefront of music performance, dazzling the public with their indisputable talent, glamorous appearance and trailblazing style. Men, on the other hand, are the behind-the-scenes majority who call the shots. Whether producing album of year or deciding who wins a Grammy or how the Grammys telecast is produced, it is mostly men who take these consequential decisions that affect the future of music and musicians. They also shape the public’s perception of who the winners at the Grammys are. Women may be the face of the Grammys but they are not its engine power.
To redress the power imbalance between men and women in music it is paramount to close the gap between the overly positive news reporting about women and the reality of their rather moderate success amidst the multitude of structural barriers they face. Barriers like persistent sexual harassment and violence, discrimination in rates of pay and frequent cultural exclusion from the ‘boys club’. As well as celebrating women’s historic wins, it is important to tackle women’s marginalisation or absence in the highest echelons of music labels. Only after removing these structural barriers can women shift to being not just the glamorous face of music but also its driving force alongside men.
