More male singers than female.. Why?

I was wondering why there are more male singers than the female?? When we start analyzing this subject right from the early days of music, we can conclude that there were very few female singers.. Even if there were many, there were only 2-3 who made it to the top..

In the early days, lets have Noorjehan, Suraiyah, Geeta Dutt when compared to KL Saigal, Talat Mehmood, Hemant Kumar, SDB etc...

When we move further down the lane, considering 50s, 60s, 70s and early 80s we just have 2 female singers who were popular and we know who they are.. Lata and Asha.. While among the male singers we have Rafi, Kishore, Manna Dey, Bhupinder, Yesudas, Jagjit Singh, RDB, SPB, Hariharan who became very much famous... Though there were many more female singers like VaniJayaram, Chitra, Usha Utup, they were never recognized as much as the above 2 mentioned...

Now moving to the current era, though we have many female singers, its Alka, Shreya and Sunidhi ruling the charts anytime... While among the male singers, we have a long long list - Sonu, Abhijeet, Udit, KK, Kunal, Shankar Mahadevan, Shaan and the list is endless...

Again comparing other singers like Vasundhra Das, Mahalakshmi Iyer, Sweta Pandit Shreya and Sunidhi seem to be ruling the charts along with Alka (Though she is hardly seen these days)

Even if we say that in the early days the girls were not allowed to work or come into the film industry, what about these days??? Arent we loosing the female singers??

Consider the reality shows contestants, there are hardly very few female singers who are coming up when compared to the male singers.. But what is behind all this?? We see that in most of the music institutes there are many girls getting trained, where are all they??

If this is the same trend, will we fall short of female singers in the years to come???

Nice topic,Anu.😊..will come back with my detailed opinion after giving it some thought ......But to state what immdtly comes to my mind,I think the reason for domination of Ashaji and Lataji thru the 60s & 70s was partly restriction of entry to other female singers.......ppl may not agree with me,but i guess this probably did happen....It has been stated in so many words by many female singers of that era......

As for today,we certainly have more popular female singers than before.But yes,they are fewer in number compared to the male singers......not sure why.....😕Maybe the competition is too cut throat.....and maybe women are not so ambitious...After all ,to achieve a certain level of popularity one has to struggle for at least 10 years......I guess most women find that to be a daunting task as thoughts and pressure of getting married and having a family creep in half way thru...So maybe,they find it difficlt to dedicate so many yrs to this profession.

Every singer be it Lataji,ashaji,Alka yagnik,Anuradha paudwal,Sunidhi chauhan had to struggle for at least 10 yrs to make it reasonably big.......ditto for the male singers too,but for them their career doesn't take a backseat with marriage...unlike in a woman's life......😳

hey anu its simple one female singer is equal to 5 male singers. 😆 Their voices are so unique and versatile compared to their male counterparts that one female singer sings differently to suit any actress-be it preity,rani,kareena or earlier actresses.whereas male singers get kind of stuck with single actor and make most of it like-udit narayan-aamir khan,sonu nigam-well he sings for all,abhijeet-shahrukh,shaan-saif ali khan,like earlier S.P.balasubramanium was only for kamal hassan and then salman khan.well this was on a lighter note but i guess you are right-there definitely seem to be more male singers than female-why?? 😕

Nowadays, most albums have very few female songs in them.

Good topic.

One reason could be dominating female singers in different eras. If you go back before Lata then you'll find quite a number of female singers. Then it was the Mangeshkar sisters and no MD would try to go much beyond them. Though not proven and visible but is a known fact they did not allow others to grow too.

So new singers could not grow much. Similar voices were rejected by the MD's. And when different voices came like say Nazia Hasan and all, they were unceremoniously thrown away.

Alka and Kavita dominated after that for a long period. Only distinct different voice than these two during this era that could come up was Sunidhi. Again MD's preferred sticking to the reliable singers who would give them the sure shot success so maybe few who had come somehow vanished from the scene.

But now with even Alka and Kavita taking a bit of back seat we can again see many female singers. Shreya and Sunidhi may be the ruling one but we can't ignore many others who have come up. And with time few like Akriti, Richa Sharma, Vasundhara Das I am sure will have a nice stay here. Singers like Chitra, Gayetri Iyer, Mahalaxmi and few more are always there to chip in too.

Its actually not so bleak presently. There are many female singers in the industry who are doing really good.

Another interesting topic 👏

If you see the number of popular singers in bollywood among male and female category so far, you may find there is not a major difference between the two.

Popular male singers(old)
Rafi, Kishore, Manna dey, Mukesh, Hemant Kumar, KL Sehgal, Talat Mehmood,Bhupinder, RD, SD, Jagjit Singh
Popular male singers(new) Sonu, Udit, Shaan, Abhijeet, Sukhwinder,Kumar Sanu, Kunal Ganjawala, Adnan Sami, Lucki Ali

Popular female singers(old) Lata. Asha, Suman Kalyanpur, Geeta Dutt, Mubarak Begum, Shamshad Begum, Usha Mangeshkar, Noor jahaan, Suraiya, Sudha Malhotra

Popular female singers (new) Alka Yagnik, Kavita krishnamurti, Shreya, Sunidhi, Anuradha Paudwal, Alisha, Sadhna Sargam, Poornima, Mahalaxmi Iyer, Vasundhra Das

Got these names from famousbazaar.com

I think the difference between male and female looks big because

Kishore Kumar and Mohd Rafi who dominated among the male category died relatively young.

There was not any famous male singer who migrated to Pakistan in 1947.

On the other hand Lata and Asha has been there for the last 60 - 70 years and some of the famous singers in female category who could have dominated the film industry migrated to pakistan. These include singers like Mubarak Begum, Noor Jahan.

Lastly female singers are more likely to retire if they cannot make it big. Lata remained single in her life and dominated the female category like no one else.

Will need further research about why the difference looks big or is there a true difference😊

there are some femal singers like chitra, hema, hemlata n many more who contributed but no one knws her(famous) like they do knw lata and asha

Originally posted by: Sur_Sangam

On the other hand Lata and Asha has been there for the last 60 - 70 years and some of the famous singers in female category who could have dominated the film industry migrated to pakistan. These include singers like Surayia, Mubarak Begum, Noor Jahan Shamshaad Begum.

i don't think suraiya migrated to pakistan.she very much lived in mumbai and passed away in mumbai in 2004.similarly shamshaad begum also lived in mumbai all her life.

Originally posted by: MiniRulz

i don't think suraiya migrated to pakistan.she very much lived in mumbai and passed away in mumbai in 2004.similarly shamshaad begum also lived in mumbai all her life.

Noor Jahan and Mubarak Begum did migrate. There were some rumors about Shamshaad Begum that she died recently but some people say she is alive and live in Bombay. I think you are right about these two staying in Bombay. Thanks for providing this info.