There is no denying that more women are conquering the pop charts in the form of big names such as Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj. In the artistic realm, males and females seem to be on equal footing.
But there is still a significant gender imbalance in vital roles that go unseen, from executives to sound engineers who are lucky to appear in a liner note.
Mary Gaffney is one of the latter. She is part of an unintentionally exclusive group, the 5 percent, a minority of sound engineers who are women.
But before Gaffney, 64, could blaze a trail, she had to learn the craft. And that meant apprenticing herself to men. She was inspired by Hank Neuberger, former head engineer at Chicago Recording Co. "When everyone was saying, 'No, women don't do this,' Hank said, 'Give it a try,' " she said.
A softball game in the early 1970s got the ball rolling. Gaffney was playing on a team that also included Rich Warren, an engineer for a radio station. Gaffney was studying radio broadcasting at the time, and a few months later, Warren talked the radio station into hiring her.
She became a piece of "a very small framework of women creating entree for themselves," said Steve Albini, longtime recording engineer and owner of Electrical Audio in Chicago.
He said there has always been a general undercurrent of sexism in all traditionally male-dominated industries, especially technical occupations. An unfortunate result of this is lost talent.
"Any time you take half the people, cut half the potential participants out of a scenario, then you're half as likely to have your chance of finding the best person for the job or finding the unique insight," Albini said.
