Women hoping to make it in country music are not only faced with the the difficulty of getting signed and the uncertainty of trying to make it in the industry, but they are dealt a second and more targeted blow: the number of women getting airtime on country radio stations is significantly decreasing. “You think about all of the little girls that are sitting at home saying ‘I want to be a country music singer.’ What do you tell them?...How do you look at them and say, ‘Well just work hard sweetie and you can do it’ when that’s not the case right now,” Underwood told podcast host Elaina Smith. The percentage of country songs sung by women, excluding duets with men, has decreased from an already low 13% to 10.4% in the last year, according to the Tennessean . The problem is not a shortage of women pursuing careers in country music, but the attitudes of industry gatekeepers.