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All-women bands are musical groups where women sing and play all the instruments, as in many riot grrl bands. They are distinct from girl groups, where the women sing but do not play any instruments.
One of the earliest all-women bands was Fanny. Joan Jett's first group the Runaways were also an early all-women band. One of the strangest is undoubtedly the Shaggs, a group of sisters with limited mastery of their instruments as well as song structures, who have a cult following.
Punk and its acceptance of very limited musical skills opened the door wider for women with a desire to rock, spawning groups such as the Raincoats, the Slits, and Lilliput. Some well known all-women bands had men in the band at times, particularly but not limited to drummers.
All-women bands exist for a variety reasons — some as a feminist political statement, others, such as the Go-Gos, more for novelty. Sometimes women form their own bands due to the limitations of male domination in the music industry in general. Women who want artistic control sometimes form all-women bands as a way to reduce challenges to their authority. Oftentimes there is no specific reason or planning for a band to be all-female, the people who came together to form it just happened to be all of the same sex, as is the case with most all-male bands.
Courtney Love, leader of Hole, has said that it's impossible to find a female bass guitarist. This is belied by her own former bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, famous bassists such as Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, Me'shell Ndegeocello, D'Arcy Wretzky of the Smashing Pumpkins, and Kim Deal of the Pixies and the Breeders.
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