Music

Triple J’s Annual #IWD Deep Dive Shows We Still Needs To Bring Girls To The Front

Music festivals are more gender diverse than ever, but elsewhere, we're still lacking.

by Joseph Earp  8 March 2019
Triple J's annual IWD report is back for 2019

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Every year, Triple J releases a kind of ‘health check’ of Australia’s music industry on International Women’s Day, designed to discover exactly how close we are to true gender parity. And this year, although the report shows signs of real improvement, it provides further proof that more direct action is needed.

The report, outlined in an article by Ange McCormack of Triple J’s Hack program, found some genuine signs of positive change, particularly in the case of music festival line-ups.

Many festivals saw a massive increase in the hiring of female artists. Indeed, only one festival had a gender parity decrease in 2018 — Laneway festival, which dropped from 44 per cent in 2017 to 38 per cent the following year.

Every other festival had a notably more diverse line-up in 2018. Especially promising is the change in the Falls Festival lineup. In 2017, only 31 per cent of the acts booked for the festival contained female members; in 2018, that amount rose to 50 per cent.

That’s the first time in the four years of the Triple J Annual report that a festival has ever achieved true gender parity, and is no doubt a result of the hard work of campaigners, musicians, and bookers who have long argued for more diverse line-ups.

Less impressive, however, is the spread of power across the gender spectrum. It remains the case that the leaders in the Australian music industry are largely male — a staggering 61 per cent of board members on peak music bodies are male. That’s a slight improvement from 2017, when the percentage of male industry leaders was 65 per cent, but it’s more proof, if ever it was needed, that there’s still a long way to go before the Australian music industry can begin patting itself on the back.

The full report, which also includes a breakdown of radio play and Triple J Feature albums, is well worth a top to bottom read. After all, the way forward is to be informed, alert and ready to create real change.