It's TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh. Music carries tremendous power to connect us to ourselves and one another.

But only a tiny percentage of music producers identify as women, which means the songs we turn up in our cars or in our earbuds can end up spreading harmful ideas about women.

In her TED 2020 talk, Madam Gandhi shares an alternative track.

It features something refreshing.

So often, I'll take a fitness class or I'll go to a music venue or really anywhere that plays music in the

background and I'll find myself loving the rhythms and the melodies and the beats and then I take a

second to listen to the lyrics lyrics that for example place us in a position of subservience that we would never tolerate in any other context.

And I am aghast at the degree to which we normalize sexism in our culture.

I listen to this music and I'm like, I don't want to have to turn up to the sound of my own oppression.

You know, music is one of the most powerful forms of communication

because it has the potential to either uplift or oppress.

Music caters to the emotions, music caters to the soul.

Music opens up our soul.

It opens up our channels to receive information about somebody else's walk of life,

to inform our own roles.

And while I have no problem with male fantasy, what I do have a problem with is that according

to a recent study, only 2.6% of all music producers identify as women.

That means an even smaller percentage identify as trans or gender nonconforming.

And what does this matter?

Because if we don't own and control our own narrative,

somebody else will tell our stories for us,

and they will get it wrong, perpetuating the very myths that hold us back.

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