I first decided I wanted to be a musician when I was 11. I was taking guitar lessons in town, and I owned a handful of CDs that I played constantly on my boombox. I spent so much time using that thing, I eventually broke the lever that closed the CD slot on top. But that didn’t stop me from listening; I just held partially open in order for the disc to make it work.

Writing was always a big part of how I would process and fantasize about things, and when the guitar came into my life, my writing began taking the form of songs. This kept happening as the years passed and new tools crossed my path: new instruments, music software, synthesis.

I had Jewel’s first two albums, Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes, Alanis Morisette’s Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, Shania Twain’s Come On Over, and a few others. I would sit in my room with the lyric booklets and memorize every lyric and every sound from every song. Once I had my own guitar, I started writing my own songs that I performed to my reflection in the mirror.

I loved these women, but I also felt that there was something missing. There were no women who weren’t traditionally feminine or who had a hardness rivaling the all-male rock bands I was starting to get into.

Things are different today. I went to Courtney Barnett’s concert earlier this year, and in her, I saw what I wanted to see as an 11-year-old girl. I’m not totally heartbroken it took this many years to see someone like Courtney Barnett reaching the mainstream, but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t hurt a little bit. There is a message, however implicit, contained in this fact: sex sells.

One recent study found that across the Billboard Top 100 in the past six years, just 2% of producers were female. Women made up just 12.3% of songwriters. When it comes to female producers and songwriters from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, that number is much smaller.

And here we zoom back to 11-year-old me, thinking to myself that someone has to be that person to make change. Now I’m 28, and I understand that a shift of this cultural magnitude is beyond anything I could do on my own. The work that needs to be done to create real systemic shift is massive and no one can be *the* person to do it.

That’s why localized efforts are so important. I volunteer with Beats By Girlz, a "non-traditional, creative and educational music technology curriculum, collective, and community template designed to empower females to engage with music technology." It is a small but forceful step forward for women in music technology.

I started working with Beats By Girlz to teach music production. Now, the thing I most want to do is empower women to trust themselves, each other, and the men that are on the right side of history in this regard. This is how we can make real and lasting change.

The only way to bring more women into the folds of music, especially in production and other "behind the scenes" roles, is to teach them how to do it—and hire them. Males have this mentorship available to them by design, because music is traditionally a male-dominated field. It falls upon those of us in positions of relative power to continue to fight for what so many before us fought for: to have a voice and be heard.

Elana releases music under the name Party Nails. Get her debut album—out tomorrow!—right here.