It's time to leave behind the lazy assumption that female artists rely on the skills of a male producer, rather than take total studio control of their music



Declare independence, raise your flag ... Björk champions women in the studio. Photograph: AFP/Dominic Favre

Last week, Björk posted a statement on her website called Time to Put It Right. In it she clarified a mistake in an article from the Icelandic newspaper Grapevine, which attributed production of her 2001 album Vespertine to Valgeir Sigur∂sson.

"I'd like to say that he didn't write it or produce," read her post. "He was a computer programmer for a third of it and a recording engineer for a third." While she suggests that journalists "must start to see the difference" between various studio roles, she also points out that there is something maddening in these seemingly casual errors: "It feel like still today, after all these years, people cannot imagine that woman can write, arrange or produce electronic music."

It's sad that a musician of Björk's stature feels this way, but she has good reason. She cites MIA's problem with music website Pitchfork as an example of why it's about more than just a failure to check the facts: "They assumed that Diplo had produced all of her Kala album without reading any credit list or nothing, it just had to be, it couldn't have been MIA herself". MIA had reached exactly the same conclusion in an angry interview with the site last year: "I just find it a bit upsetting and kind of insulting that I can't have any ideas on my own because I'm a female."

I interviewed Alison Goldfrapp a few weeks ago, and she must be sympathetic to both Björk and MIA. She remembered losing her temper with one particularly rude French journalist. "After five minutes of talking to Will [Gregory, the other half of Goldfrapp] about knobs, he turned to me and said, 'That's a very pretty dress you have on, Alison.'"

It could be because female music journalists, particularly those covering the hallowed ground of beeps and beats, are less common. Female producers are rarer still. But an explosion of new talent makes me optimistic for the future. While Santogold works with other producers, she insists on total studio control ("I had to put my foot down so many times and be an asshole"). Closer to home, there's London's Micachu, Croydon's MC GoldieLocks, who freely admits that her ambition is to produce, and the laptop-assisted electro-pop of thecocknbullkid.

It's absurd that it's been so hard to imagine these women producing their own beats and loops, just as it's ridiculous to imagine that there's some geek-boy svengali pushing the buttons. It's time to leave behind the lazy assumption that Diplo, Will Gregory, Valgeir Sigur∂sson or any other male producer has the controlling hand.