In metal, it seems that women are nowhere but gender is everywhere. This title offers a sociological analysis of metal music's historical and global gender imbalance to investigate why this genre is such an impenetrable fortress for female musicians and how it could change.

Introduction: Gender Inequality in Metal Music Production 1. Winds of Change? Longitudinal trends and cross-national differences; (co-authored with Frank Weij)  2. 'Female-Fronted Metal': Gender Differences and (Sub)Genres  3. All Vocals, Few Chords: Gender Differences in Instrumentation  4. Wielding the Double-Edged Sword: Gender Differences in Artistic Careers  Conclusion  Appendix 1: Quantitative Data - The Metal Archives Appendix 2: Qualitative Data - Interviews with Metal Musicians

Drawing on the online Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives, interviews, and online materials and interviews by others, the authors investigate how many women are involved in metal music production and the extent of gender inequality in the genre, looking at longitudinal trends and cross-national differences, subgenres within metal, roles in terms of instrumentation, and the degree of recognition between female and male musicians. They develop the concept of gender as a double-edged sword, in which women attract attention for their bands but are often evaluated based on their feminine appearance rather than musical skills, by linking it to theories of tokenism and cultural/structural embeddedness, and provide a theoretical overview to explain gender inequality in metal music production by examining the practices of learning, doing, and evaluating at the levels of society, pop music, and metal.