Music festivals are the lifeblood of British summer time. Turning up to a random field with
tent and wellington boots in tow – praying you won’t have to use them and can instead don
your sparkly tops and bucket hats – is a quintessential experience. However, for an industry
we often look to as a beacon of progression, it is shocking to find such a profound level of
inequality at its flagship events. With festivals beginning to reveal their line-ups for 2025, I
wanted to explore just how prevalent this inequality is.
It is clear we are not short of female artists. Over the past year, the charts have been
dominated by women, from newcomers like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and Raye to
seasoned professionals Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Charlie XCX. Yet, despite the
prominence of these successful performers, we still fail to achieve equality in festival
bookings. UK festivals feature an average of just 25% female acts, the latest stat for the
2024 festival season. Compared to as little as 5% in 2015 this may seem like progress, but
over the course of 10 years this improvement barely scratches the surface, the measures
being put into place to promote equality at festivals simply are not going far enough.
Male artists in the industry are currently three times more likely to be booked for UK festivals
than their female counterparts. Why? This is a systemic problem spanning the entire music
industry, one of the most egregious offenders of sexism. This inequality begins in education,
where women are more often encouraged to pursue careers in teaching music rather than
trying to break into the industry itself. Women are far less likely to be picked up by talent
scouts, receive investment to produce music or even gain airplay on the radio. This disparity
was highlighted in a 2019 survey, which revealed that only 20% of the artists signed to UK
record labels were women.
It is particularly evident that the biggest players in the festival world are the ones fielding the
fewest female artists. This is even more surprising considering these festivals boast the
highest ticket sales long before their line-ups are announced. These should be the events
taking risks with representation, booking new and unseasoned acts, and giving established
female artists the opportunity to headline. In 2020, Matty Healy of ‘The 1975’ spoke out
about this issue, vowing that his band would not play festivals that failed to achieve equal
representation of male and female artists. In his announcement, he urged other prominent
artists to do the same, adding clauses to their contracts to push festival organisers to give
greater opportunity to female artists. It is clear in this that change will not happen unless
people across the music industry stand united.
When we compare the 2024 line-ups of UK festivals to those of big European festivals like Primavera – which is now achieving an equal gender balance without compromising quality – the failure becomes
glaringly obvious. UK festivals like Glastonbury claim to have achieved 47% male to 53% female artists in their last festival season, however, this stat is grotesquely misleading with the reality being more in the region of 47% all-male acts to just 26% all-female acts. This is down to festivals inflating numbers through a ‘soft’ gendered approach to line-up balance. This approach classifies any band with a single female member as a ‘female act,’ even if the band has four male members. This method undermines many female instrumentalists, overlooks the contributions of women as individual artists, and results in a disproportionately higher percentage of male performers.
A harder, more deliberate approach is needed to ensure greater representation of female
artists at festivals. Unfortunately, as seen with Download Festival’s recent 2025 program
announcement, meaningful change is unlikely to happen any time soon unless greater action
is taken.