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Gender inequality and sexism at Reading & Leeds?

paigelambie

By paigelambie
in Reading & Leeds Festivals

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paigelambie Newbie

paigelambie

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http://mhm.hud.ac.uk/MusicRadioHud/node/583

This is a link to a podcast about the gender inequality at Reading and Leeds this year. Would really appreciate if you could have a quick listen + let me know what you think below... is Reading and Leeds promoting a sexist music scene that favours male artists over females? Or should they focus more on the actual music rather than be criticised for a lack of females? Comment below with your thoughts...

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paigelambie Newbie

paigelambie

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Hey,

Definitely gonna give this a listen when i get home from work.

I wrote an article on this a while back. Be interesting to see what folk think:

http://www.fortitudemagazine.co.uk/industry/politics/reading-leeds-festival-sexist/23963/

That's awesome, I appreciate that - will definitely give your article a read in a bit.

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Hawky Explorer

Hawky

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The pool of artists that fit the demographic of this festival, is male dominated, that's a fact. You can't blame a festival for the state of the music industry, which a lot of people seem to be doing. I also agree with Yellow, all the responsibility can't be passed on to RandL to completely revolutionise the music industry- i honestly find it a tad ludacris that people even suggest the festival organisers are swerving females on purpose.

With the female artists available to the festival in terms of touring schedules, discarding the ones where repeat bookings would occur, I think the festival have done ok at booking female artists. 10% (9.6%) of the acts announced have a female member (that statistic sums up the music industry, not the festival bookers outlook on women musicians); admittedly that's not great, there could be more female artists on the bill, but why force it? I'd rather the festival stayed as it were, than start booking random pop acts or other acts that dont fit the festival,(which would ruin the integrity of the festival) just to please certain people- or else we could have another "Daphne and Celeste " moment... *gulp*. The beauty of music festivals is, there's always going to be one for you, no matter what your sound. Whether that be death metal (do people raise this issue with death metal festivals?...) or pop music, unfortunately the male- female ratios will vary.

The festival have already proved they want to help female artists grow with Paramore headlining last year and one day they'll bump FATM up the bill to headline status, Melvin confirmed this himself. I can also see bands like Wolf aLice/ HAIM/ Warpaint/ Jungle/ Marmozets and Clean Bandit going far with the festival, not necessarily headline but they should do well. Personally, I'd love London Grammar(don't seem to be doing much, album two is in the pipeline though)/ Lorde (spending a while on album two)/ HAIM (in America)/ Ellie Goulding(not really for the festival, sadly) All to be announced for RandL, but there isn't much chance of any of them.

In terms of the festival bookers themselves being sexist, Melvin also books Latitude Festival which has more Bands with females in, than without announced so far, I think... (Just proves that it depends on the festival demographic)

What annoys me the most about people raising this as an issue is, less than half of the lineup has been announced. Normally the festival sees around 250+ artists perform, less than 100 have been announced. In fact, judging by how many names were on the bill last year ((276)and there seems to be a few more each year) there's still 183 names TBA, that's More or less exactly 2/3 of the final bill TBA. (But at this trajectory, around 24 acts including a female will be announced in total, which would equate for 8-9% of the bill, but we will ignore that...)

Peace. #scenes

Edit: I should've took Couchy's approach...

Edited by A_Hawky
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DanielM17 Newbie

DanielM17

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The pool of artists that fit the demographic of this festival, is male dominated, that's a fact. You can't blame a festival for the state of the music industry, which a lot of people seem to be doing. I also agree with Yellow, all the responsibility can't be passed on to RandL to completely revolutionise the music industry- i honestly find it a tad ludacris that people even suggest the festival organisers are swerving females on purpose.

With the female artists available to the festival in terms of touring schedules, discarding the ones where repeat bookings would occur, I think the festival have done ok at booking female artists. 10% (9.6%) of the acts announced have a female member (that statistic sums up the music industry, not the festival bookers outlook on women musicians); admittedly that's not great, there could be more female artists on the bill, but why force it? I'd rather the festival stayed as it were, than start booking random pop acts or other acts that dont fit the festival,(which would ruin the integrity of the festival) just to please certain people- or else we could have another "Daphne and Celeste " moment... *gulp*. The beauty of music festivals is, there's always going to be one for you, no matter what your sound. Whether that be death metal (do people raise this issue with death metal festivals?...) or pop music, unfortunately the male- female ratios will vary.

The festival have already proved they want to help female artists grow with Paramore headlining last year and one day they'll bump FATM up the bill to headline status, Melvin confirmed this himself. I can also see bands like Wolf aLice/ HAIM/ Warpaint/ Jungle/ Marmozets and Clean Bandit going far with the festival, not necessarily headline but they should do well. Personally, I'd love London Grammar(don't seem to be doing much, album two is in the pipeline though)/ Lorde (spending a while on album two)/ HAIM (in America)/ Ellie Goulding(not really for the festival, sadly) All to be announced for RandL, but there isn't much chance of any of them.

In terms of the festival bookers themselves being sexist, Melvin also books Latitude Festival which has more Bands with females in, than without announced so far, I think... (Just proves that it depends on the festival demographic)

What annoys me the most about people raising this as an issue is, less than half of the lineup has been announced. Normally the festival sees around 250+ artists perform, less than 100 have been announced. In fact, judging by how many names were on the bill last year ((276)and there seems to be a few more each year) there's still 183 names TBA, that's More or less exactly 2/3 of the final bill TBA. (But at this trajectory, around 24 acts including a female will be announced in total, which would equate for 8-9% of the bill, but we will ignore that...)

Peace. #scenes

Edit: I should've took Couchy's approach...

Exactly. It is an industry (and partially genre) issue.

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