The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee will be meeting next month to craft the 2021 ballot. In recent years there has been mounting pressure from artists and critics to induct more women into the Hall of Fame. Let's ask and answer some questions regarding the numbers.

Q: How many women have been inducted into the Rock Hall?

A: Between 1986 and 2020, there have been 923 people inducted into the Hall of Fame, 70 are women (7.6%). The following graph shows how many men and women have been inducted each year.

Q: Aren't those numbers misleading because for a female-fronted band like Blondie, that only counts as one woman and six men?

A: Only 15.4% of inducted artists include at least one woman. On average, the Rock Hall inducts about 1.5 artists with a woman per year versus 8 which are all-men.

Q: What is with the gaps in the chart?

A: No women were inducted in the Rock Hall classes of 1986, 1992, 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2016.

Q: Greg Harris, the Rock Hall Museum President, said the low numbers are "a reflection of the amount of music that was made in the 50's and 60's, and I think we get more of an explosion of female performers especially in the 80's and 90's." So that must mean the female numbers are trending up?

A: The graphs above certainly don't show any upward trends overall. If you look only at inductees who began after 1980, five out of 23 have a female member (Stevie Nicks solo, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Joan Jett), and all of them began their solo recording careers in the early 80s, which means there is no female representation for artists starting between 1985-1994. The 22% of artists from the 80s and 90s is higher than the overall 15%, but it's hardly an "explosion."

Q: How many women have been inducted twice?

A: In 2019, Stevie Nicks became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock Hall for a second time. Twenty-one men have been inducted twice, and Eric Clapton has been honored three times.

Q: Who decides which artists get inducted?

A: Some quick background on the induction system: The Rock Hall's process of determining its honorees begins with an appointed Nominating Committee consisting of roughly 30 members (artists, label executives, writers). That committee meets once per year and develops the performer ballot, which then gets sent to the 1000+ member Voting Committee, consisting of all living Hall of Famers plus an undisclosed list of others in the music industry (again, artists, writers, industry people). The five to seven artists who receive the most votes get inducted.

The Rock Hall has historically been secretive about who is on the Nominating Committee (and they still won't provide the list when asked), but we have been listing it on Future Rock Legends for years. While the Rock Hall argues that it's lack of women inductees is just a reflection of the gender imbalance in rock history, there is no such justification for allowing a system that they fully control to continue to have a gender imbalance such as this:

When you look at the above graph, which shows that just 11% of Nominating Committee members have been women over the years, it's hard not to think that the system has been rotten from the start, especially when some men in the group were abusers of women (or were apologists for it). Look at how overwhelming the numbers were between 1999-2006, and then scroll back up and look at how many women were inducted during that era:

The slow and steady gains in recent years looks positive, but it hasn't been enough to move the needle on the ballot or with the inductees. Just three women were nominated last year, and only Whitney Houston was inducted.

It should also be mentioned here that of the 74 people who have been listed as committee members which make selections in the Non-Performer, Early Influence and Sidemen categories, only three have been women (4%).

What should the Rock Hall do about any of this?

Well, if they don't do anything, it will be more of the same, despite Jann Wenner's insistence that in 20 years people will be complaining too many women are getting inducted. The 2020 class added twenty men to the Voting Committee and zero women, which just exacerbates the imbalance in the system.

A better option would be to listen to Rock Hall critics like Evelyn McDonnell. In her piece about the issue titled The Manhandling of Rock 'N' Roll History, she outlined three steps the Rock Hall needs to do to begin to right the ship:

1. Flood the nominating committee and voting membership with more women.
2. Reduce the voting power of members inducted as players in bands
3. Nominate a shit ton of all-female bands next year.

This will be the first induction class under the new leadership of John Sykes, who took over as Chairman of the Board for the Rock Hall Foundation at the beginning of 2020. While Sykes inherits the Rock Hall's dismal record of nominating and inducting women, he can't be expected to correct 35 years of gender imbalance overnight, as the Hall of Fame's history has already been written. What Sykes does have full control over and can correct immediately is the gross inequity of the induction system itself. If Jon Landau, the Nominating Committee's chair, won't diversify his membership this year, he should be removed from his post. He has had 22 years at the helm and has clearly failed to bring equity of opportunity to the process, even after critical outcry.

The Nominating Committee is just one piece of the puzzle that needs to be fixed. It's safe to assume that the gender split of the Voting Committee is also heavily titled towards men. McDonnell's suggestion to dilute the voting power of bands is a great idea and should be implemented for the class of 2021. Combine that with a fresh look at the non-inductee voters to make sure there is a true diversity of voices casting ballots.

The Rock Hall has been predominantly run by white, male, baby boomers for its first 35 years. They built a museum and a cultural institution that tells the story of rock and roll as they experienced it, but it's an incomplete history. It's long past due to start a new chapter born from an equitable system.