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Subscribe and listen to the full playlist of 100 Country Songs for International Women's Day above.
Where to begin...
At this point, it's no secret that there's a glaring gender disparity in our world that has existed essentially for all of recorded history.
While things like gender equality and feminism have felt like buzz words in pop culture or ways to make yourself seem educated and maybe, just maybe, score a date with the opposite sex, the battle for women to have an equal share of literally any pie has been a long fought one, and one that's still ongoing.
Zooming in to what we know best at Holler, you can see this gap clear as day in the realm of country music, which has always been the ultimate boy's club.
Though a handful of female artists have been able to push through the cracks – think Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood, Lainey Wilson and Ella Langley, as well as several others – women have largely been scrapping for equal stature in the country music limelight, especially after the infamous Tomatogate controversy in 2015 (more on that later).
Although radio airplay is still all about the dudes (female artists saw an abysmal 11% of airplay in 2022), that hasn't stopped women in the genre from making an impact, scoring major award wins, topping country charts, selling out arena-sized tours and making their own fair share of history along the way.
So, in honor of International Women's Day and our continuous efforts to bridge the gender gap in both country music and the world at large, we've made the ultimate girl power playlist, filled with country songs to pick you up, make you proud, hold your hand and scream along to with your gal pals.
Lock in, ladies. Here are the Top 10 country songs for International Women's Day.
Lainey Wilson - Things a Man Oughta Know
Who needs a man? Lainey Wilson certainly doesn’t according to her 2021 smash hit, ‘Things A Man Outta Know.’
She can hitch her own trailer, change her own flat tire, but most importantly, she understands how she deserves to be loved and isn’t willing to accept anything less.
When Wilson released ‘Things A Man Outta Know’, first in 2019 on her Redneck Hollywood EP and then on her third studio album, Sayin' What I'm Thinkin’, it would ultimately mark her breakout, the song making ears perk to the soon-to-be superstar. However, the earnest tune, with its tough-as-nails lyrics against Wilson’s vulnerable lilt, also began to cement the artist among the ranks of fellow female powerhouses, like the Lorettas, Dollys and Mirandas of the country genre.
The staunch independence and no-nonsense bent that shines throughout ‘Things A Man Outta Know’ would only mark the beginning of the empowerment and autonomy that Lainey Wilson has brought to country music.
- Alli Patton
Ashley McBryde, Caylee Hammack, Brandy Clark & Pillbox Patti - Bonfire at Tina's
Throughout its history, country music has documented the thoughts and experiences of working class women through songs created by working class women for working class women, and Ashley McBryde's Lindeville from 2022 was filled with evocative vignettes that celebrated the small town lives of women.
From the trailer park screwball comedy of 'Brenda Put Your Bra On' to the stoic melodrama of 'The Girl in The Picture' and Aaron Ratierre's affectionate portrait of a lovable trainwreck, 'Jesus, Jenny,' the album was filled with songs that felt like a window into the world of the majority of American women.
The incendiary, stadium-sized torch ballad 'Bonfire at Tina's'–performed by McBryde with Caylee Hammack, Brandy Clark and Pillbox Patti–felt like a joyful bugle call of solidarity as the women threw their troubles into the fire and set alight to everything from low self-esteem and loneliness to lazy men and not getting laid enough.
"When Monday comes around, we'll go back to talking shit," they sing in exultation as the song reaches its explosive finale. "But tonight, we're all just bitches that are sick of taking it."
It's not easy to fit gender dynamics, economic exploitation, body image, sexual subjugation, gendered expectations and the limited opportunities that women face compared to men all into one giant empowering sing-a-long anthem, but somehow 'Bonfire at Tina's' managed it.
- Jof Owen
Dolly Parton - Just Because I'm a Woman
For a figure that's famously kept most of her opinions and beliefs to herself throughout her astonishing career, Dolly Parton sure knows how to craft a clapback, blockbuster hit.
The title track to her sophomore record from 1968 and the album's sole single, 'Just Because I'm A Woman' was daring upon its release as it called out a male partner for judging her past relationships and sexual history. Based on an actual conversation had with her late husband, Carl Dean, it called out the double standards and expectations that have been placed on women for the history of time.
"I can see you're disappointed / By the way you look at me / And I'm sorry that I'm not / The woman you thought I'd be," the song opens, before absolutely railing the absurdity of a woman not being able to have control and sovereignty over her own body.
"My mistakes are no worse than yours just because I'm a woman," Parton repeats four times as if the key to getting the message to sink in is simply committing it to memory... Has it worked yet?
- Lydia Farthing
Maddie & Tae - Girl in a Country Song
Back in the 2010s, the country charts were overwhelmingly dominated by the backwards baseball cap wearing beery chauvinism of Bro Country; a sub-genre of male artists which objectified women and glorified machismo, partying and beer drinking. Songs like Thomas Rhett's 'Get Me Some of That,' Blake Shelton's 'Boys Round Here' and 'Aw Naw' by Chris Young were playing at every tailgate party you went to, and Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean were singing menacingly about women in cutoff jeans and bikini tops.
It was so prevalent that it even had its own parody song, the table turning bro-country bashing pop country anthem 'Girl In A Country Song' by Maddie and Tae, which probably sums up the gender gap in contemporary country better than anything else, looking back to a time when women in country songs “used to get a little respect”, and highlighting the contrasting way women in contemporary country sing about themselves with the way they’re often depicted in the songs being sung by men.
"Conway and George Strait never did it this way back in the old days," they sing pointedly. "All y'all, we ain't a cliche / That ain't no way to treat a lady."
Urgh men!
- JO
Few country songs have been as controversial as Loretta Lynn’s ‘The Pill.’ Few tunes have also been as groundbreaking.
The jaunty number from 1975 came at the height of the women's liberation movement, a moment in history when women were demanding equal rights and opportunities in the workplace and in society. Reproductive rights were a key component of the movement, and ‘The Pill,’ albeit with a comic tone, spoke to the importance of birth control, the autonomy it gave women over their bodies and the freedom that came with that.
It was a taboo subject for the age, and as a result, ‘The Pill’ was often refused country radio airplay. Controversy swirled and the tune stalled at No. 5 on the Hot Country songs chart in the US, but that was no nail in the coffin for ‘The Pill.’ The confrontational song, plain-spoken and deliciously brazen, became a crossover hit, peaking at No. 70 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was met with wider success in countries like Canada and Australia.
As an early feminist statement in the realm of country music, ‘The Pill’ would blaze a trail and, today, the song remains an open and honest dialogue about the right to choose what’s right for you.
- AP
Mickey Guyton - What Are You Gonna Tell Her?
Few songs are as crushingly beautiful and relatable as Mickey Guyton's 'What Are You Gonna Tell Her?'
An absolutely chilling piano ballad released in 2020 as the first single to what would become her debut album, Remember Her Name, the song's impetus came after Guyton was asked by a young, hopeful woman in Nashville what she should look forward to as she pursued a career in country music. Realizing that she didn't have one good thing say, the devastating lyrics of what would become 'What Are You Gonna Tell Her?' poured out during a writing session with Canadian artists Victoria Banks, Emma-Lee and Karen Kosowski.
Gender discrimination, racism, sexual abuse and more, the song speaks to so many of the experiences that women have faced for their entire lives as everyone in the world just shrugs it off and says that nothing will ever change because this is simply the way it's always been.
"What are you gonna tell her / When she figures out / That all this time you built her up just so the world could let her down?," she asks pointedly, with lines like "Do you just let her pretend / That she could be the president?" feeling especially poignant in 2025.
Guyton released 'What Are You Gonna Tell Her?' after a decade of trying to pave her country music path, and she was convinced that it would be the song to end it all.
“I was trying so hard to fit into the stereotype of what country music is, that I forgot why I fell in love with country music," she shared around the song's release. "We’ve been in this period where it’s all about having a good time and drinking and girls. It’s so heavily male-dominated that I don’t hear myself, and I don’t see myself within it anymore. Country music is three chords and the truth. So I wrote my truth.”
And, while her truth is a painful portrait of the reality for women everywhere, thank God she did.
- LF
The Highwomen - Redesigning Women
In 2015, a country music shit storm blew up when radio station consultant Keith Hill advised that “if you want to make ratings in country music, take the females out.” Weirdly justifying his comments by explaining that female artists were “just not the lettuce in our salad" he shone a light on the prejudicial treatment of women in country music.
"The lettuce is Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton, Keith Urban,” he argued about the analogy that's still confusing to this day. “The tomatoes of our salad are the females.”
Inevitably labelled Tomatogate, Hill's comments drew widespread condemnation from women in the country music industry, including Jennifer Nettles, Miranda Lambert and Martina McBride, whose "Tomato" T-shirt now hangs in the Country Music Hall of Fame, while Margo Price wore a less ambiguous “You Say Tomato, I Say Fuck You" T-shirt.
A year later, when Amanda Shires was finishing her record, My Piece of Land, in Dave Cobb's studio, she had the idea to create a female country supergroup in homage to the legendary Highwaymen. Cobb recommended Shires call Brandi Carlile and together they brought in Natalie Hemby and Maren Morris, who called her second album GIRL in direct response to the lack of women in the country mainstream.
The supergroup announced themselves with the fourth-wave feminist anthem 'Redesigning Women' as they reconnected the dots between the post-war female country trailblazers and stars of the late '60s and '70s through to today’s queens of country.
“Redesigning women, running the world while we're cleaning up the kitchen. Making bank, shaking hands, driving 80. Trying to get home just to feed the baby,” they sang as they made their debut at the Newport Folk Festival, where they were joined onstage by Dolly Parton.
10 years on and we still don't understand what sort of maniac would think the lettuce is the best bit of a salad.
- JO
“God bless the girls who bring home the wine / When you need a friend, no, they don't think twice / They let you go on for the ten-thousandth time / And tell the same stories about the same guy / They're easy to keep and harder to find / God bless the girls / And thank God for mine...”
Megan Moroney gave fans the ultimate love song when she released ‘The Girls’ on 2024’s Am I Okay?
It isn’t a ballad about long-lost love or love at first sight, ‘The Girls’ is about a romance that’s far deeper and far more forever. It’s about the love we have for our friends, our best gal pals and the ones who will be with us through thick, thin and until the end.
‘The Girls’ is a revelation, a breath of fresh air, as Moroney tips the typical dialogue about relationships on its head to pay homage to her most trusted companions and the true loves of her life: her girls.
- AP
Martina McBride - This One's for the Girls
When 'This One's for the Girls' came out in summer of 2003, it felt like such a profound statement.
In a genre that has more or less constantly been male-dominated (at least in recent history) and inundated with songs about chicks, trucks, beer and other country clichés, it was as if Martina McBride was forcing all of that to take a backseat, if only for four minutes, so that women could hear a song made specifically for them.
Written by Hillary Lindsey, Aimee Mayo and Chris Lindsey, 'This One's for the Girls' is like a love letter full of support, affirmations and empowerment to women of all ages in all stages of life, admonishing them for all the things that make them beautiful and reminding them that everything will be okay... and if nothing else, at least having a killer dance session to the country-pop smash.
"This one's for the girls / Who've ever had a broken heart / Who've wished upon a shooting star / You're beautiful the way you are / This one's for the girls / Who love without holdin' back / Who dream with everything they have / All around the world / This one's for the girls," we all scream in unison.
- LF
Shania Twain - Man! I Feel Like A Woman!
After the golden age of women in country music in the '60s, the '90s ushered in a second with a decade that brought such feminist classics as Deana Carter’s 'Did I Shave My Legs For This' and Martina McBride’s 'Independence Day.' More than anyone though, it was Shania Twain who added stadium-sized rock production to her up-tempo country-pop with the help of Def Leppard producer Robert "Mutt" Lange, that defined pop country in the '90s.
With sales of over 40 million copies worldwide, Come On Over is an indisputable masterpiece recognised by Guinness World Records as the biggest-selling studio album of all-time by a solo female artist, the best-selling country album in the US and, wait for it, the world's eighth best-selling album of all time!
Out of the album's 16 songs, a whopping 12 were released as singles, including 'Man! I Feel Like a Woman!' which, along with songs like 'That Don’t Impress Me Much,' became an anthem of '90s female empowerment, alongside deeper cuts like 'Black Eyes, Blue Tears,' which tackles domestic abuse, and the feminist schooling of 'If You Wanna Touch Her, Ask!'
A self-celebratory song about female empowerment, hedonism and a woman’s prerogative to "have a little fun," 'Man! I Feel Like a Woman!' is the perfect song to crank on International Women's Day.
“It just became everybody’s song," Shania says of the song. "It’s kind of a bridge song, a unifier. I was talking about myself and it was genuine. Then it resonated with everyone: men, women, children. The LGBTQ+ community, I guess, see that song as one of their celebration songs. It’s very touching for me. It’s touching because it’s so all inclusive.”
- JO
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For more Country Music Best Songs Lists, see below:
