In this paper, we examine the gender-related trends on the Billboard Top 40 charts between 1997 and 2007. Building on similar statistical studies (Wells, "Women in Popular Music," "Women on the Pop Charts," "Nationality") our study aims to answer two questions: first, does the number of hit songs by male artists continue to exceed the number of hit songs by female artists as we move from the late 1990s into the early postmillennium; and, second, are women's chart success rates in the late 1990s and the early post-millennium as precarious as they were in the 1980s and the early to mid-1990s? 1 Taking frequency and success score distributions as our indicators, we conclude that the Top 40 charts continue to be characterized by considerable gender inequality.

This study of the digital storytelling (DST) project at the South Asia Hub of the Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research Programme Consortium examines the capacity of DST practice to articulate women's diverse experiences of empowerment, given the genre's formalities and narrative guidelines. I challenge notions that DST mediation is limited to relationships between the storyteller and the technology, and instead focus on mediation as a co‐creative process. There are at least two overlooked dynamics in DST. The first is how the organisation adopts narrative guidelines to fit their framework and purpose; and second, the social relationships mediating the way actors related to one another in the workshop. I find that the workshop model and specific narrative structure may constrain ways of conveying ‘experience’. Not every participant's experience or mode of narration is readily suited for DST. On the other hand, participants also report DST as useful for strengthening community relationships and opening up a more self‐reflexive space for critical thinking.