Only one in ten headliners at the UK's top music festivals this summer will be women, a BBC study has found. A real facepalm moment as it seems no-one booking festivals has learned last year's lessons of pushing female headliners – it really is a bit painful.
The news comes despite many events previously promising to achieve a '50/50' gender balance across their line-ups by 2022. Commenting on the study's findings, US singer songwriter Maggie Rogers said "it feels awful" to look at event posters with the names of female artists so often in a smaller text, beneath those of male acts. Progress has been made on some line-ups, however.
Wireless festival headliners are SZA, Cardi B and Nicki Minaj – all female. Reading and Leeds headliners are Megan Thee Stallion, Halsey, Dave, Artic Monkeys, Bring Me The Horizon and Rage Against The Machine. Strawberries & Creem in Cambridge says 60% of its artists this year are female or non-binary, with Ella Mai, Mabel and Tems headlining alongside Lil Wayne."We didn't seem to struggle at all getting really high-profile females on our line-up," says the festival's CEO Chris Jammer. "That was something we set our agenda to at the beginning of the booking process and carried it through." Full article via BBC