In May 2022 we reported on the gender imbalance among headline performers at UK music festivals.
When the 成人快手 first carried out similar research in 2017, it found 80% of the bill-topping acts at major festivals between the mid-1980s and that year had been male.
In 2022 the Shared Data Unit teamed up with Radio 1's Newsbeat and took a slightly-different approach - focussing not just on the top ten festivals in the UK, but the top 50.
The findings showed that little had changed despite a series of major campaigns to improve the split of main stage performers at the summer events.
What we found
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Only 13% of performers were found to be a female solo act or all-female band.
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While there was a small proportion of mixed-gender acts and one non-binary performer, all-male bands and solo artists occupied three quarters of the top billings.
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Half of all the festivals in the study had no female headliners on the bill.
US singer Maggie Rogers, whose hits include 鈥楪ive a Little鈥� and 鈥楢laska鈥�, said the lack of female representation at festivals continued to be 鈥渉orrifying鈥� and urged festival directors to be bolder in their choice of headliners.
And Brit Award-winner Kate Nash said she was frustrated many continued to argue that it was difficult to book female acts in the top slots.
However, the chief executive of the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) Paul Reed said it was unfair to blame the lack of balance on festival directors alone.
He said inequalities ran throughout the 鈥榯alent pipeline鈥� and had as much to do with booking agents, promoters, music schools and gig operators.
Methodology
This study looked at the headings used on festival posters across the UK. We chose the 50 festivals to use in our study from YouGov poll and manually-entered the name, ages, gender and career length of every act in the largest font on each festival poster. More on the methodology, background and findings can be found .
Data
We produced with the details of every headline act at 50 festivals across the country as well as the event's location and capacity.
Partner usage
The story featured as a bulletin piece across local and national television and radio through 24 May, 2022 and a radio package aired at breakfast, midday and evening bulletins.
Paul Lynch from the team carried out two-way interviews on 成人快手 Radio Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Derby, Gloucestershire, Hereford and Worcester, Humberside, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Cambridgeshire, Cumbria, Coventry and Warwickshire and West Midlands.
Paul also appeared on the Look East evening news while Mitch Mansfield, a colleague from Radio 1鈥檚 Newsbeat appeared, on the News Channel.
Special radio packages were made for Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, Radio Five Live, 6 Music and the World Service.
A number of our partner network used the story as well.
- Eastern Daily Press, 24 May 2022.
- Glasgow World, 24 May 2022.
- The National Wales, 24 May 2022.
- Suffolk News, 24 May 2022.