ABSTRACT
In June 1988 the magazine Musician ran a series of articles on ‘The Women's Movement of 1988’ with features on Sinead O'Connor, Tracy Chapman and Michelle Shocked. As Gillian Gaar observes, discussing how women performers feel about working in a male-dominated field was hardly innovatory, but the caption which appeared on the magazine cover: ‘Why the best new artists of 1988 are women: the major labels change their tune’ highlighted what they felt was a new and significant development – women as part of a new musical movement ‘women in rock’, serious women who played acoustic guitars and who had a social conscience. 1
