Are female singers more famous than male ones?

The other day there was a question on Popmaster where Ken named 3 members of Girls Aloud and the contestant had to name the other two. Not a difficult question by any stretch of the imagination, but in theory it should have been quite difficult. Think about it, aside from bands you're a fan of, how many bands can you name every member of? Obviously there would be a few, but not too many.

It got me thinking though, with many of the successful girl groups from the 90s onwards it's really not that difficult to name all the members. I don't think too many people would struggle to name all members of the Spice Girls. I don't thinking naming every member of All Saints or B*Witched would be too difficult either. I'd say naming all members of Atomic Kitten or Sugababes including changes in personnel isn't too difficult. Even the more modern ones like the Saturdays or Little Mix I could name all the members even if I'm not overly familiar with their music.

With boy bands though it's not that easy. One exception would be Take That, but with East 17 many could name Brian and Tony but people would struggle to name John or Terry. Then you had Bad Boys Inc who I considered to be the third biggest boy band of that era, but I couldn't name any members.

With Boyzone, Louis Walsh has said he recruited Ronan and Stephen to sing and the other three to make up the numbers. I could tell you who the other three are now, but I'm not sure I could have in the 90s. With 911 I could have named Lee and since the Big Reunion I could name Jimmy but forget who the other one was. I knew who J from 5ive was and maybe Rich too, but never noticed Sean until the cardboard cut-out of him in the "Let's Dance" video and even then I couldn't name him. I never knew who Abz was until his solo career and can now name the other member thanks to the Big Reunion and that fact its the same name as Jason Donovan's character in Neighbours.

I tried to recall the names of the Westlife members (including Brian) and could think of four, but I'm not exactly sure who's who. I could name Marvin and Aston from JLS, Nathan from the Wanted and whilst I can now name every One Direction member, for a while the only would I could name was Harry Styles.

It's not just boy bands and girl groups though. I don't think I could have named Lee from Steps until the Steps reunion documentary was on a few years ago. I've always known who the female members were and think I remembered H mainly because he seemed quite irritating.

When Paul left S Club 7, many people didn't realise he was in the group in the first place. Most of them knew who the female members were. There was a Popmaster question last year asking to name the male member of Liberty X who won The Voice, the contestant didn't know, neither did I and I still don't know who the other male member is, I know who all the females are though. Likewise with Hear Say, I can name all the female members and none of the male members.

Going back to the original point of knowing all the Girls Aloud members, I also couldn't name any members of their rival boy band One True Voice from Pop Stars: The Rivals.

The question therefore is why do female pop singers from groups seem to be better known?

An obvious answer when it comes to mixed gender groups is that you hear much more of the females on the songs. There are some songs where you don't hear any male singing on there at all, and even those where you do, the male part always seems to be a minor one.

When it comes to boy bands and girl groups though, there is one notable difference. We all know that Gary Barlow was the main singer in Take That or Ronan Keating was the main singer in Boyzone, but who was the main singer in the Spice Girls? or All Saints? or Girls Aloud?

It has become apparent from shows like the Big Reunion that some female singers had more vocal duties than other group members, but from your average listeners perspective it's never been obvious who is supposed to be the main singer in most girl groups.

One notable exception to this is the Pussycat Dolls. It was always questioned what contribution any of the members made to the music aside from Nicole Scherzinger. I could name some other members, but not all of them. I recall reading that when Carmit Bachar, the member with red hair, left the group their management got fellow member Jessica Sutta to dye her hair red to look like Carmit, presumably so that the general public wouldn't notice there was a member missing.

Maybe that's the answer then, if a group has an obvious lead singer or two then people know who they are but not the rest of the group, if there isn't an obvious singer then all members are just as well known as each other. It just so happens that boy bands often fit the former and girl groups fit the latter.