Cutting Through the (Digital) Clutter: Technological Change and Careers of Men and Women in Cultural Markets

How will technological change, and in particular digitization, affect the careers of men and women artists in cultural industries? Digitization has the potential to help women artists by enabling their work to be directly consumed by new audiences. However, digitization is a broad phenomenon that not only affects how creative work is consumed, but also shapes how it is produced. We isolate the role of digital production technologies in affecting the relative success of men and women artists. We argue that unlike digital consumption technologies that can mitigate gender inequality, digital production technologies have the potential to exacerbate gender inequality. Digital production reduces barriers to entry and creates a crowded marketplace, where artists must self- promote to gatekeepers to get lucrative gigs. Insofar as men are better connected to (men) gatekeepers, they are more likely to succeed in this crowded marketplace. We develop and test this theory using a full-cycle research methodology, combining in-depth interviews with a novel quantitative dataset on the labor market for studio singers in the Hindi film industry. This paper contributes to the study of digitization and its differing effects on men and women artists and explores the implications of technological change for women in the arts.

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