We’ve spoken at great length before about the lack of gender diversity at both gigs and their lineups, and we’ve highlighted how there are plenty of concert lineups that seem a little male-centric, but it looks like the message still hasn’t sunk in for festival organisers.
Just recently, the legendary Reading & Leeds festival announced Kasabian as the headliners for the 2017 edition of the festival. With artists like Muse, Flume, Two Door Cinema Club, Fatboy Slim, and At The Drive-In on the lineup, it’s a music lover’s dream. Let’s just take a second to look at this lineup and start wishing we were over in the UK in August.
But for those playing at home, there might be something else that you’ve noticed about the lineup. Namely, the lack of female representation. Let’s take another look at it, but this time we’ll leave in the acts that have female members in it.
No, you’re not seeing things, the 2017 Read & Leeds lineup features only one act that has a female member; New York’s Against The Current. In fact, if we want to really look at it on a broader scale, out of the 58 musicians who have been asked to play at the festival this year, only one of them is female. If statistics are more your thing, that’s 1.75% of the total lineup.
By comparison, Thursday’s Hottest 100 countdown saw some amazing female representation for a change. The top 4 tracks all featured female artists, which expanded to a total of 10 female artists in the top 10.
All up, we saw 34 songs in the countdown this year with female contribution, including 15 female artists, 13 tracks with female vocals, and 7 acts that included a female member.
One could even look at other current festivals, including the Firefly festival, in the US, whose lineup was announced today. While the lineup is a little better, and features a few more than just one lone female act, it is still a decidedly male-dominated lineup.
You may recall however, this isn’t the first time that Reading & Leeds has been called out for neglecting female artists. Back in 2015, we took a look at what that year’s edition of the festival looked like once you removed all the male acts.
While we’ve spoken about how to get more females acts on lineups before, it is a ridiculous notion that a festival of Reading & Leeds’ magnitude was only able to lock in one act with a female member.
Many may argue that festival lineups are chosen based on merit rather than gender, but when a large festival chooses to overlook many of the amazing female musicians we have in the world, they are setting an example for future festivals that needs to change immediately.
