There are countless articles and think pieces tracking every single new trend on YouTube, from mukbang to cottage core, to tiny living and those wordless ‘oddly satisfying’ videos that make you realise there is a weird part of your brain that enjoys watching someone cutting soap.
However, there is one trend that gets far less coverage. I first noticed it a couple of years ago. Every year, YouTube releases its list of the top videos and top creators. Reviewing these lists I noticed one demographic that was strangely absent from these annual rankings: women. When I decided to look at the actual stats on the platform I realised the true scale of the problem. As the COO of ThoughtLeaders, (an influencer marketing platform and agency that specialises in YouTube brand partnerships) I work with YouTubers on a daily basis. But even as someone who works closely with the platform and the creators who have used it to build their careers, I was pretty shocked to discover that the gender divide cut so deep.
To get to the heart of what the numbers had to show us about this problem, my team and I decided to focus on a list of the top 50 creators with the most subscribers on the platform. That means we filtered out musicians, brands and corporate production companies. From that filtered list we divided the top creator-led channels by gender, and we discovered that among YouTube’s top 50 most-subscribed creators, only seven are women — and four of them are actually kids. That leaves just three adult women on the list. The biggest YouTuber? MrBeast, boasts a whopping 319 million subscribers. Meanwhile, the top female creator is Like Nastya, a 10-year-old girl with 120 million subscribers.
Incidentally, MrBeast (whose name doesn’t exactly indicate a nuanced approach to gender) recently came under fire for a leaked internal production document that included the following instruction about how other employees should relate to the all-male on-screen talent team: ‘It’s okay for the boys to be childish. If talent wants to draw a dick on the whiteboard in the video or do something stupid, let them. Really do everything you can to empower the boys when filming and help them make content. Help them be idiots.’ This is the YouTuber that countless wannabes are busy emulating, in order to try to achieve something like the same level of success.
When I started to talk about why men dominated the top spots on YouTube, people had a variety of different reactions
Many people (including many who work in the industry) were shocked to find the problem was actually that bad. Other people were more resigned to this status quo. After all, what’s surprising about the patriarchies’ continued dominance in all areas of entertainment, economy and culture? Why should YouTube be any different?
During my research, I learned that the current situation was in no way inevitable. After all, female creators had played a crucial role in building what is now known as the ‘creator economy’. Around the early 2000s, blogging software’s rise opened doors for women, particularly young Gen X mothers, who turned to blogging as a platform to share their authentic experiences. These so-called ‘mommy bloggers’, quickly became pioneers in online content creation, and were instrumental in establishing and normalising monetisation strategies such as sponsored content.
Women also found early success on YouTube, where female-led channels like lonelygirl15 and Brookers were crucial in shaping the early YouTube landscape. lonelygirl15 blurred the lines between fiction and reality, using the platform to tell an interactive story that captivated millions, while Brookers gained recognition for her comedic videos, making her one of YouTube’s first viral sensations.
One of the platform’s early superstars was Jenna Marbles (below), with her humorous and relatable content that tapped into everyday experiences. Her ability to blend comedy with authenticity made her a global internet superstar, and she was the first solo YouTube creator to be immortalised in wax at Madame Tussaud’s. There is no Jenna Marbles equivalent on YouTube today in terms of reach and reputation. (Many people bring up Emma Chamberlain as an example of a prominent woman on YouTube, but with 12 million subscribers, her audience pales in comparison to the creators at the top of the charts.)
The women that found success at the earlier stages of the creator economy show us that today’s depressing male-dominated landscape was in no way inevitable from the outset of YouTube. Remember, the video streamer prided itself on being a democratic entertainment platform. So what went wrong — and why is no one paying attention to this?
I get it, people don’t like talking about misogyny. It’s depressing and boring and, despite whichever wave of the feminist movement we are on now, there still aren’t any easy answers for achieving true equality between the sexes. The people who generally focus on the creator economy prefer to get excited about the Brave New World that these social platforms open up for creators, and the huge amounts of money that are now available for many independent creators from all different backgrounds. Refreshingly, women don’t seem to be at all underrepresented in the industry itself. I know so many talented women in roles of talent managers, campaign strategists, partnership managers and creator economy business owners. Why focus on the unchallenged dominance of white, twenty-something men on YouTube when there are plenty of women thriving in this new industry?
However, YouTube’s power, influence and reach should not be overlooked…
The platform is visited by 40% of the world’s adult population on a monthly basis. A whopping 71% of American teenagers visit the platform on a daily basis. The reach of the biggest creators on the platform grows larger every single day, and at the moment, that group is depressingly homogenous.
I decided that it was worth trying to understand more about the glass ceiling on the world’s most popular streaming platform, and how things got to where they are today. The resulting investigation culminated in a four-part series (part 1 below) in which I tried to investigate various different culprits that could be named and shamed for their role in the current YouTube climate. I looked at the gender pay gap, the insidious issue of online misogyny and trolling, and YouTube‘s own algorithm.
To say that any one of these stood out as the single contributor would be to miss the bigger picture. Instead, these issues are interconnected, collectively shaping the landscape that is broadly hostile to women creators at the very top of the platform. In order to push towards a more equitable and inclusive future for all creators on YouTube, we need to put responsibility on the platform itself to address these factors, and then perhaps one day, we’ll see a female creator scaling the same heights as MrBeast.
Featured image: Andrew Haimerl / Unsplash