Industrial music has long been a rather masculine genre.

But women have always been a part of industrial music. Here are a few who contributed in the early days of the genre's development, before the Wax Trax era, when "industrial" generally meant Throbbing Gristle and Caberet Voltaire. Before, in other words, the rise of other industrial women like the Bomb Gang Girls, Lucia Cifarelli, Anna Christine, and Tobey Torres. I'm also not including the adjacent "no wave" scene that included many women, like Lydia Lunch, China Burg, Nancy Arlen, and the members of Bush Tetras.

Wendy Carlos

Wendy Carlos probably counts more as "proto-industrial." There were many pioneering women of early electronic music; Delia Derbyshire for example. But Wendy Carlos's score for Clockwork Orange was particularly influential on industrial music.

Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle has cited her work as a huge influence on him and TG/Coil co-founder Peter "Sleazey" Christopherson. The film and its soundtrack also had a huge impact on Cabaret Voltaire and the Sheffield scene. It was the first time many of them had even heard electronic music. We can consider the release of the film as the inciting incident of the industrial music movement.

Learn more: Richard H. Kirk on Clockwork Orange

Cosey Fanni Tutti

What can I say about Cosey Fanni Tutti that hasn't already been said? She was a founding member of Throbbing Gristle, the original industrial band. She and fellow TG co-founder Chris Carter have continued to work together for years under the names Chris & Cosey and Carter Tutti, and more recently has been releasing solo work. In 2017 she published an autobiography, Art Sex Music and in 2022 about the lives of three women: 15th century mystic Margery Kempe, Derbyshire, and herself.

Learn more: Tutti answers questions from Guardian readers.

Caroline K

Caroline K co-founded Noctural Emissions and Sterile Records in the late 1970s and also had a solo career before her untimely death from leukemia in 2008. Nocturnal Emissions doesn't get talked about all that much anymore, but they were part of the early days of industrial music and the related tape trading scene.

Learn more: Discipline Magazine: Remembering Caroline K

Alaura O'Dell

I might be stretching the definition of "early industrial" here, but Alaura O'Dell, previously known as Paula P-Orridge, is best known as a member of Psychic TV with her ex-spouse Genesis P-Orridge. She also performed with one of the OG industrial bands, 23 Skidoo, in 1982 at the tale end of, or just after, the first wave of industrial music.

Learn more: 2004 interview with Alaura O'Dell

Jarboe

This is another one that might seem like a stretch since Jarboe didn't join Swans until 1985 (and because I explicitly said I'm excluding no wave). But she had previously been part of the tape trading/mail art scene and released her first solo cassette, Walls, in 1984. Still a bit late, but emerging from that initial industrial wave (and from Georgia as part of the tape trading network, as opposed to the New York City art scene that produced no wave). She went on to become one of the most visible women in industrial and experimental music.

Learn more: Jarboe talks about the tape trading scene in this interview with Sonic Abuse.

Grace Jones

Wait what? Well, in 1980 Grace Jones covered The Normal’s industrial pop track “Warm Leatherette. She infused her work with industrial textures, especially on the album named for that track. She was never likely to be confused with Front 242, but even the pop hit “Slave to the Rhythm” has traces of the industrial sound has thematic overlap with the “electronic body music” subgenre of industrial.