Photo: WENN
This year's Reading & Leeds' major line-up announcement, despite its extensive hype, was overshadowed by one observation - on a bill of nearly 90 acts, only nine contained women. Was this a calculated omission? Or, perhaps worse, a mere oversight? Who better to consult than the people actually in charge of deciding which bands make it on stage.
We spoke to the teams in charge of booking some of the UK’s major festivals - some of whom reached out to us to defend themselves and others we contacted directly - and asked them to explain, anonymously, why women are so often under-represented on the festival circuit.
There were certainly those who were reluctant to view the gender bias as anything other than an availability problem. “I think this may well be one of those years,” said one insider, “that the major festivals, for whatever reason, have not booked as many female artists as other years. I do not put that down to a conspiracy theory. It’s about availability.”
Last week, Melvin Benn echoed these sentiments in his first public statement since the controversy erupted. “The facts speak for themselves in terms of female acts that were available at that time and that fit the Reading and Leeds bill,” he told NME. "I can't pretend we're not conscious of it," he explained. "But we can't put a bill together based on gender, we can only put a bill together based on availability and appropriateness." One might argue that the last few years at Reading haven’t been exactly been overwhelmed with female talent - but availability of acts is always going to be a key consideration.
Benn did have a point, though, when he highlighted the fact that this year’s Latitude line-up fares much better than Reading & Leeds thanks to the presence of Laura Marling, Portishead and La Roux. Similarly Bestival issued a statement identifying the significant number of female DJs and performers on their bill, with organiser Rob Da Bank saying “There are shedloads of amazing people making some startlingly good music at the moment… from pop to leftfield, soul to hip-hop and some ace DJs too, and look, lots of them are female! Whatever next?” The fact remains however that women are still in the minority at every major festival this year - but appear to be most often overlooked when it comes to rock and metal.
Hinds at the Village Underground (Photo: Emma Viola Lilja)
So how do our insiders explain this? Firstly, there’s the radio’s dominance. “Reading & Leeds' audience isn’t hardcore music fans”, one claimed. “It's kids who want to hear the bands that they know from radio or that their big brother/sister played.” Looking at Radio One’s current playlist, their A-list contains a few female artists out of 15 - Ellie Goulding, Rihanna, Haim’s track with Calvin Harris - but only Haim are close to Reading & Leeds material. The women on their B-list are Ella Henderson, SOAK, Jess Glynne, Kelly Clarkson, Florence + The Machine and Taylor Swift. While SOAK could appear on the bill at Reading, even she would admit she's a fair few years off headlining, and Florence is expected to play just one UK festival this summer. By contrast the Radio One playlist boasts Foo Fighters, Royal Blood, The Vaccines, Kasabian, Raury, Slaves, Years & Years and Peace - all classic and varied potential R&L bands. None of them contain women. Seemingly Radio One are happy to confine women to pop, R&B or dance - while men belong anywhere they want.
One of our festival bookers went further. “Is it uncool to like female guitar bands?” they suggested. Many disagreed (some strongly) but as long as the radio and festivals and media continue to act as if they don’t exist, then to some people, there might be some truth in this. Young people are unquestionably influenced by the media they consume, and if female guitar bands don’t make it into their consciousness, either on the radio, on blogs or at festivals, where are budding young musicians, or just young rock fans, supposed to get their inspiration?
The business behind running a major festival cannot be ignored. One insider pointed out that festivals are “dangerously operationally leveraged businesses” who often base their bookings, particularly when it comes to headliners, on who sells out major venues. Glancing at the bands set to play Brixton Academy, a venue they admit to keeping a close eye on when making bookings, is very telling. They don’t have a single woman on the bill until November, when Garbage take to the stage. If this is what UK festivals are taking their cue from, it’s hardly surprising there’s such a void.
Even those women who seem to be perfect headliner material by playing big London gigs at The Roundhouse (3000 capacity) and Brixton Academy (5000 capacity) aren't sure bets. When we brought up St. Vincent to one booker, for example, they point out that despite a hugely successful press campaign, her UK tour in August was still not sold out a fortnight before it began. “She's an acquired taste,” agreed another high-profile booker, adding, “She's an example of a very strong artistic woman who's done incredibly well, but in terms of headliner material at certain festivals it just wouldn't work, it would be a risk.” It could be argued Annie Clark remains a risk worth taking - particularly as a way of bringing her music to a mass market audience - but it seems that Clark may have to sell out Brixton Academy before she gets her chance to topping the bill at the 35,000 capacity Latitude festival.
St. Vincent at Shepherd's Bush Empire (Photo: Justine Trickett)
But why are we focussing so heavily on headliners anyway? Because when it comes to festivals, headliners appear to be the deciding factor for ticket sales and media coverage. “Headliners are massively important to their launch, as media and audience alike tend to think in these terms” one booker explained. Another person we spoke to agreed, adding, “It’s bloody annoying.”
The media’s focus not only overplays the importance of headliners, but also in the way we talk about (or don’t talk about) women in music. If we continue to constantly refer to women as “female-only” bands, we mark them out as some sort of niche genre. If we covered female artists in genres other than pop as much as we should, perhaps we wouldn’t feel the need to point out their gender as if it was some sort of astonishing piece of trivia.
When the edited Reading & Leeds poster went viral, hoards of commenters angrily insisted that, to them, gender was irrelevant, so why are we making a fuss? When a section of society is being under-represented in the media, consumers are, for the most part, not conscious that it’s even happening. That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. People’s tastes are fed to them by the media, and the radio, and festivals, and if they continue to offer such a limited scope when it comes to gender, race and sexuality, it’s hardly surprising that fans’ tastes tend to reflect this. It’s akin to offering only plain T-shirts in a clothes shop, then insisting, by looking at sales, that plain T-shirts are all the public wants.
Watch Florence + the Machine play 'Shake It Out' at Hackney Weekend below
So perhaps a little positive discrimination, heaven forbid, might actually be a good thing after centuries of sidelining. One of our bookers certainly thinks so. “I tell you what we would do actually,” he said. “There would be situations with our headliners where we would say, 'Actually we need something female-led' - that would happen sometimes. It wasn't a situation where we would say, 'There's not enough women', it was more, 'It's not diverse enough. You want to balance the bill.” It’s clear this is a step in the right direction. Because if festivals continue to make conscious decisions to represent a more diverse spectrum, then the cycle of under-representation will, eventually, be broken.
Essentially, if festivals, the media and the radio make a greater effort to truly represent the broad range of genres in which women are a part, the rest will fall into place. Perhaps we should all stop defensively crying out, “Gender is irrelevant to me!” and start to accept that the facts and statistics say otherwise. As one of our insiders so perfectly puts it, “The more Sleater-Kinneys there are, the more Warpaints there are. The more Warpaints there are, the more bands like Hinds there are.” That much we can all agree on.
Watch Melvin Benn discuss female sidelining with Gigwise here.
