Jennifer Nettles demands equal play for women in country music

"Of the top 500 charted country songs from 2014 to 2018, only 16% were by female artists. That is tragic. Those numbers reveal a truth that artists share and lament over" - country singer Jennifer Nettles wrote in her article for the Glamour. She has started an initiative "Equal Play" demanding, well, obviously, equal play for women in country music - "I’m calling it #EqualPlay to underscore equal pay, because it’s the same gender pay gap that’s happening across so many industries and in our culture at large". Another issue in country music, she writes, is age - For women in country music, what happens is that even out of that 16% who are being played, the average female is 29 years old. For men, the average mean age in that group is 42. That says a lot about what we value socially—the pressures that are put on women in terms of ageism and beauty".