"Labels felt it was too hard to break a woman at radio so they weren’t signing them, and radio says the labels aren’t giving them the artists. When I signed Miranda [Lambert to Sony in the early 2000s], it was never ‘Uh-oh, she’s a female.’ That only started in the last 10 years. I [recall] taking an artist around, and a record label exec said, ‘I’m not signing any females’ — not even ‘I’m not signing your female.’ I mean, that was spoken."
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tomato-gate