How Dolly Parton used country music to challenge gender double standards
American country music star Dolly Parton performs on the Pyramid Stage at Worthy Farm in Somerset. The icon died on August 35, 2026. She promoted gender equality through her songs.
What you need to know:
- Dolly Parton used powerful songs to challenge double standards and workplace discrimination.
- Her music confronted gender inequality decades before conversations about workplace equity became mainstream.
Country music icon Dolly Parton (January 19, 1945–August 25, 2026) had an electrifying stage presence, infectious smile and tantalising voice that pierced your heart even before you digested the lyrics in her sentimental and sing-along pieces. But underneath some were poignant messages about gender equality.
Take Just Because I’m a Woman, released in 1968, for example. In the song, performed like a conversation with a silent listener, she addresses a partner who is disappointed, going by the way he looks at her and (sarcastically) apologises for not being who he thought she would be. She then tells him that her mistakes are no worse than his just because she is a woman. Dolly Parton is here talking of double standards: demonising women for follies that men are not held accountable for.
Literature on the origin of this song says that it was a direct response to an inquiry early in their marriage by her husband, Carl Dean, about her prior romantic relationships. Snidely replying in the affirmative, the song challenges him to look at the mirror and answer the same question for himself. In short, what is good for the goose, is good for the gander. The universal appeal of the song across genders makes it a parable about lovers needing to accept that romantic relationships begin the day they accept one another, not before.
In the second verse, she puts the interlocutor in her place and reminds him that if her past were a source of shame for him, then his history would probably also be an embarrassment to someone else. In this, she reminds him that the relationship was a choice consciously made by both of them. Dwelling on their murky pasts, therefore, would only bring psychological misery. Should the fact that each of them has a history be a justification for terminating the relationship?
She broadens the inquiry by taking men head-on for misleading innocent girls, ruining their reputations and moving on to look for other women to marry, leaving the victim “to do the best she can” – struggle alone. The punchline then comes when she tells the interlocutor that she was no angel, but a victim of a man who let her down. Could it be possible that he has also not let down another woman elsewhere? Confronted with this question, many men would hang their heads in shame.
Personal story
The underlying philosophy is that if you look for something, you will get it. And if it breaks your heart, just deal with it since it is a self-inflicted injury. Fortunately, the personal story had a happy ending – the marriage endured for nearly 60 years, till Dean’s death last year.
In coming up with such a song at a time when the women’s liberation movement was still in its infancy, Dolly Parton treaded the road not taken by fellow female country musicians like Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn who also sang about social issues but purveyed conservative norms about the responsibility of wives to their husbands and not the other way round. Dolly Parton filled the critical gap of presenting a counter-norm.
Then there is 9 to 5, a theme song in a film by the same title, released in 1980. This piece features economic patriarchy. It starts by capturing the hustle and bustle of a working woman getting out of home to hit the traffic. The song progresses to depict the exploitation in the workplace, wondering “what a way to make a living, barely getting by” because “it’s all taking and no giving”. In this saga, the woman’s mind is used but without credit given, which is “enough to drive you crazy if you let it”. The stagnation of the woman is captured in the words “You would think I would deserve a fair promotion/want to move ahead/but the boss won’t seem to let me/I swear sometimes that man is out to get me”.
The situation looks hopeless because the woman’s dreams cannot be realised as she is just “a step on the boss-man’s ladder”, a means to an end. Yet there is hope because “you’ve got dreams he’ll never take away”. Redemption is in solidarity with fellow workers all waiting for the day their “ship’ll come in”. Then, “the tide’s gonna turn”. The chorus calls patriarchal capitalism what it is – “a rich man’s game” characterised by “putting money in his pocket 9 to 5”.
Though Dolly Parton never identified herself as a feminist, these songs portray her social consciousness about inequality. The residual value of those messages invites us to eulogise her through the chorus in one of her songs. “Yesterday is gone, but tomorrow is forever”.
The writer is a lecturer in Gender and Development Studies at South Eastern Kenya ([email protected]).
