Summer Music Festivals 2021: What Happened to the Goal of Gender Balance?

Summer music festivals are back. After a year without in-person shows, music lovers are eager to attend multi-day festivals where they can see their favorite artists, or even discover new performers.

photo credit: Alexscuccato [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)

The problem? There’s a good chance that attendees, half of whom are women, will be heading to sets dominated by men artists. According to #BookMoreWomen, all-male acts currently make up 65% of major U.S. music festival lineups, but this is not to say the music festival industry hasn’t made some improvements.

Two years ago, we documented several wins for women in music: Beyoncé became the first Black woman to headline Coachella in 2018, Ariana Grande became the first woman to headline Lollapalooza in 2019, and the Keychange pledge, a global movement to achieve gender parity at festivals by 2022, has gained significant traction.

But it’s 2021 now. Since the onset of the pandemic, summer music festivals have had more than a year to create balanced lineups, yet the numbers show that women artists aren’t given equal opportunity when it comes to performing on headlining stages.

Gender balance at music festivals has been a known issue for decades.

Conversations about gender balance at music festivals are not new; women artists and their supporters have pushed for gender-balanced lineups for years.

As much as music festivals are about music itself, they’re also a huge opportunity for artists to promote themselves and their work. Festivals select big-name headliners each year, effectively determining who is relevant as a musical artist — and who isn’t.

The lack of women artists in these lineups, especially the lack of women’s names in the promotional big print, falsely implies that women aren’t talented or important enough to perform on the biggest stages.

We all know this messaging isn’t true. Women artists are extremely talented and arguably some of the most popular performers in the industry; artists like Dua Lipa, Ariana Grande, Olivia Rodrigo, Doja Cat, and Megan Thee Stallion are currently dominating The Billboard Hot 100.

So why aren’t these women booked for headlining stages?

Numerous factors such as who gets recording time and who receives awards can influence music festival lineups, but many in the music industry believe the lack of diversity at music festivals has to do with the general lack of diversity in the business itself.

Andrea Magdalina from SheSaid.so said it best in an interview with Vox:

You can only create diversity onstage or on the screen if there is diversity behind the stage and behind the screen as well,” [Magdalina said]. “If you have a bunch of men in the boardroom deciding who gets booked for what, of course they’re not going to be mindful of representation diversity and inclusion.

Some artists and activists say the goal of gender balance at music festivals has been forgotten over the course of the pandemic. Based on what we’ve seen so far this summer, we agree.

What do the music festival numbers look like in 2021?

Rolling Loud, which took place in Miami this past weekend, marked the first major music festival since the beginning of COVID-19. Its headliners? Three men. According to #BookMoreWomen, only 17% of all acts at Rolling Loud featured one woman or non-binary member.

Unfortunately, Rolling Loud sets a trend for the rest of the festivals we’ll see this summer. Some numbers are better than others:

Firefly Music Festival in Delaware has announced that two of its four headliners will be women artists — one of these artists is a woman of color. 11 individuals will perform within these acts, meaning that 18% of Firefly’s headlining individuals are women.

Looking beyond the big print, 43% of Firefly’s musical acts will include women or non-binary artists.

At Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, six of nine headliners feature women; this includes 15 individuals, so 40% of headlining individuals will be women.

But not all lineups look like these.

The Governors Ball in New York City has selected a woman artist as one of its four headliners. Otherwise, 40% of Governors Ball’s acts include women or non-binary artists, which is down from 42% in 2020.

Out of all the summer music festivals we’ve looked at so far, however, Lollapalooza has one of the most unequal lineups.

Lollapalooza has selected 16 headliners for its return to Chicago; this includes 44 performers, 95% of whom are men. Looking down the rest of the lineup, only 27% of all acts at #Lolla include women or non-binary artists. Somehow, this number is even lower than it was in 2019.

Help us keep this conversation going.

Check out #BookMoreWomen on Twitter and Instagram for more information on this summer’s music festival lineups. If you’re attending a festival this summer, use the GA Tally app to tell us about the gender balance of the acts you see. Festivals have had more than a year to diversify their lineups. Let’s hold them accountable.