Women account for 29.7% of creators signed to rosters that generate intellectual property (IP), according to a new gender parity index, while representation among managers and agents is lower. The report identifies 63 qualifying companies and professionals with rosters composed of at least half women.
The findings cover the people and companies that shape creator careers, including labels, publishers, managers, and agents. Across major labels, professional management, and the largest booking agencies, women remain about three in ten, a share that has barely moved even as business resources have grown.
Roster parity and the 50% Club
Rosters shape who receives investment, teams, distribution, touring, licensing, and the opportunity to build long-term value. The report focuses on creators who are signed, represented, and positioned to build that value, an economic and contractual lens rather than a judgment about whose work matters most.
Session players, engineers, touring professionals, employees, and others are outside the analysis unless they are also signed to a qualifying creator roster. The index therefore measures gender parity in the rostered creator economy, not the entire music workforce.
She Is The Music and the report’s data partner invite the global music industry to pursue gender parity by 2030 wherever roster mathematics make that achievable. Fifty percent is an aspirational benchmark for measuring progress, not a quota or an instruction governing any individual decision.
Where existing roster size and turnover make standing-roster parity unattainable by 2030, organizations may establish voluntary, legally reviewed representation objectives; broaden outreach, sourcing, development, and retention practices; and publish aggregate progress toward parity. Each individual signing and employment decision should be made independently using role-relevant, consistently applied criteria.
Representation by role
Women represent 29.7% of rostered IP-generating creators. The plateau extends to representatives: women account for 26.7% of managers and 25.9% of agents.
Across three professionally represented comparison groups, the share increases only modestly. Women’s representation remains within fewer than five percentage points of the overall creator baseline, a consistency that shows the industry’s most highly resourced sectors have not yet produced representation approaching parity.
Preliminary workforce data indicates women may be less represented among agents and managers than among rostered creators. Because not all companies have supplied workforce data, these figures should be treated as an early descriptive comparison, not a definitive finding or evidence of causation.
New deals and large rosters
Women account for roughly 35% of new representation deals each year since 2023. That is higher than the standing roster share, but it is not yet moving toward parity.
Scale is not the barrier. Three qualifying agencies with more than 100 creators have crossed 50%, while large independent rosters also report higher shares of women than several major agencies.
The 50% Club includes 63 qualifying companies and professionals whose rosters are at least half women. These leaders demonstrate that balanced roster composition exists across a range of business models, markets, and roster sizes.
Rankings and major players
The rankings recognize qualifying companies and professionals with the highest share of women on their creator rosters. Depending on the company and representation category, rosters can include creators working across recording, songwriting, production, and multiple disciplines. Minimum roster thresholds reduce distortion from very small rosters. Rankings measure roster composition, not company culture, compensation equity, promotion, investment levels, ownership terms, or commercial outcomes.
Category rankings identify leaders at every qualifying size. The spread between the highest- and lowest-ranked major agency is eight percentage points, yet none approaches parity. CAA leads the group and employs five of the ten agents with the most women-forward rosters, indicating that individual roster results can point toward company-wide opportunity.
ROAM and Ground Control Touring hold the two most balanced rosters in the large-roster comparison, while the four major agencies remain within approximately four to twelve percentage points of those leaders.
Rolled up across their imprints, the three major label groups fall within approximately three percentage points of one another. Each is slightly above the aggregate independent-label sector in the dataset.
Concord leads this comparison, and Universal Music Publishing Group ranks highest among the three major publishers. The full field falls within fewer than five percentage points, reinforcing the broader pattern of limited differentiation at the top of the market.
