The Impact of Girls Behind The Rock Show

Girls Behind The Rock Show is made up of a volunteer team of 24 people united in their belief in one unified mission: help more women become involved in the music industry starting from a younger age. Originally the founder, Shelby Chargin, continued to use the name of her podcast highlighting women who were working in the rock scene. It's based off of her favorite 182 song and lyric, “I fell in love with the girl at the rock show” and redefined for young people who don't identify as men working in this industry and want to dominate it.

Over the span of five years, the GBTRS community has grown exponentially in numbers and adjusted its focus. They took the time to become more self-aware and cultivate a community instead of the initial co-signing of men stemming from the warped tour scene Shelby came from. Welcoming not only women but non-binary people as well, inclusiveness is a pillar to uphold among everyone. The established voice is a collective unaccepting of the idea that things stay the way they are and are unable to change.

“As far as the company itself goes, it'll feel satisfying when we see some real systemic change.”

Creating the most change was attainable after taking ego out from taking blame. The most difficult part seemed to be getting people to openly admit their faults and taking time to fix them. Action items are easy to come by once you start addressing the problem. Deciding who to work with also became easier after realizing who is actively choosing to be a part of the problem and who is learning to be better. Other organizations have taken time to reflect during this current climate on what they haven't been doing correctly and reached out to them to create these proper programs and fix it.

In the past 4 years, GBTRS has been able to provide over 7,000 women and non-binary music industry professionals with career opportunities, internships, shadowing experiences, and more through the GBTRS Networking Group. From a survey of 700 members taken last year 84% have participated in paid opportunities and 52% unpaid opportunities including internships and volunteer work found through the group. Six companies said they use the GBTRS Networking Group to hire group members as well. I myself have taken part in paid and unpaid work through this network.

Even with these amazing accomplishments Shelby has much bigger goals in mind for the near future. As taking unpaid internships is an opportunity of privilege, GBTRS plans to create a program to set aside money to offset expenses for young women to come live in the big cities extending to young women who get their first job. The biggest goal is to create a completely tuition-free music and entertainment college university for non-men. Shelby’s perspective is “If you want to fix something you have to put the money in to fix it and the way you do that is education”. Ambitions like this will be achieved as GBTRS continues to build out relationships with young female artists who want to work with more women on creating something new and want to inspire more young women.