Your questions are all good and worthy of a much longer article than one of these Pop Culture Shorts, which are limited to 150 words. My thinking was that because I haven't seen gender justice in country dealt with elsewhere on Medium, it would be better to write about it briefly and start the conversation rather than ignore a problem that, if the studies are right, is somehow getting worse when the lives of women have in many ways improved.

My view of music is that it both reflects and comments on the wider culture, and in the case of country, it's reflecting economic forces such as the growing gap between the rich and poor and political realities such as the country's drift toward the right. I could write thousands of words on either of those or the attempts to address it, which include not just the equal-play intiatives I mentioned but the formation of progressive artists' groups working for change. That's beyond the scope of what I have time to do right now. But I hope others will pick up on and write about the questions you raise and that your comments will encourage them. Thank so much for raising issues I didn't have room to mention!