The paper defines Gender Well-Being as “the ability to authentically embody and express our socially situated gender through consumption and shared experiences,” structured around six interdependent dimensions that link individual dignity with structural conditions. Using n-gram analysis and topic modeling on 2,555 Billboard Top 100 songs by solo artists from 1959 to 2023, the authors show that male artists’ lyrics tend to emphasize empowerment and health, whereas female artists’ lyrics more often highlight agency and belonging.
Key takeaways:
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Gender Well-Being reframes gender inequalities as unmet human needs across six dimensions—safety, access, belonging, empowerment, agency, and health—connecting everyday gendered experiences to consumer and societal well-being.
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Analysis of popular music lyrics over seven decades finds that all six GWB dimensions become more prominent starting in the 1980s–1990s, with empowerment and health especially salient in men’s songs and belonging and agency especially salient in women’s songs.
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The framework offers concrete implications for marketers, policymakers, and cultural producers, such as designing policies and cultural narratives that center belonging and structural inclusion for women and that reframe men’s health and help-seeking as empowered rather than vulnerable.
“We define Gender Well-Being (GWB) as: The ability to authentically embody and express our socially situated gender through consumption and shared experiences,” says Frias.
Read the paper.
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