The festival gap

When Beyoncé (below) headlines Coachella, she will stand out not only for her return to the stage – she will be one of the few women to headline a major music festival this year. With the festival scene booming, driven in no small part by millennial-generation women, female representation is lagging behind – an imbalance especially glaring in the age of the #MeToo movement for gender equality. Men alone are the top-of-the-bill headliners for many of the best-known pop events this year, including Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo in the United States and Reading and Leeds in Britain. It was also the case at Glastonbury last year. Male dominance persists not only among headliners. Indie rock bible Pitchfork, compiling the nearly 1,000 performers booked for 23 leading US and Canadian festivals last year, found that 14 per cent of artists were female, with another 12 per cent of acts either comprising men and women or not identifying in binary gender terms. Some link the low female representation to the nature of the music industry where men historically have called the shots. “Now there are a lot more female acts that really deserve to be booked ... what’s possibly happened is the structures haven’t kept up with the change in talent,” said Vanessa Reed, head of PRS Foundation, a British charitable fund that leads the Keychange initiative to address gender imbalance at festivals. Under the initiative, about 60 festivals in Europe and North America have pledged at least 50 per cent representation for women by 2022. Festivals include the BBC Proms – the premier classical event will meet the goal by ensuring 50 per cent of performed works are by female composers – and Midem, the industry networking event in France.