If you’ve tuned into triple j today, you may have noticed that the ladies have taken over. It’s nothing but female presenters and all the music you’ve been hearing comes courtesy of the talented women of the music world.

It’s all part of triple j’s Girls To The Front programming, a day when the national youth broadcaster puts the focus on female artists to celebrate International Women’s Day, which as we’ve noted is a day when we celebrate women and reflect on inequality.

triple j have certainly been doing plenty of both. The (mostly female) crew at Hack recently had a look at the playlists of the triple j network’s three stations — triple j, Double J, and Unearthed — to analyse the number of female artists played.

They randomly chose one week (1st – 7th February 2016) and looked at every playlisted song for each station, categorising artists as “solo female”, “artists with at least one woman”, and “songs featuring guest female vocals”.

Hack note that the music libraries were analysed retrospectively and that the library staff were not aware of Hack‘s analysis, so the playlists could not have been skewed in advance to improve female representation.

So how did the stations do? Pretty well actually, though a slight male bias still appeared. The total percentage of female solo artists, acts with at least one woman, and songs featuring female guest vocals at triple j and Unearthed was 39 percent each.

Meanwhile, the percentage was just slightly lower over at Double J at 35 percent. Hack‘s warts-and-all analysis also revealed a disparity in the number of female artists chosen as features on each station.

Over on triple j, just 17 out of the last 52 feature albums were by solo female artists or acts with at least one woman. Slightly better over on Unearthed, with the station shining the spotlight on 23 females out of 52 feature artists, whilst 20 out of Double J’s last 52 feature albums were by females.

It’s not clear just what triple j plan on doing with the data reaped from the analysis, but the station ought to be applauded for allowing an honest analysis to take place. All the numbers are there in black in white in the handy infographic below.

Image via triple j

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