Festival
Tyler Church
It may not be so obvious looking at lineups these days, but according to a new study by female:pressure, some progress is being made on gender balance of electronic music festival lineups. In their FACTS 2022 survey, 26.9 percent of people booked for festivals were women over the reporting period 2020 and 2021. 1.3 percent of the artists surveyed were non-binary and 9.1 percent were mixed (acts made up of more than one gender). 59.1 percent were male. In the first survey done in 2012, 9% of the festival lineups were female.
Gender gap at festivals over time
The first edition of the survey was first published in 2013, and updated in 2015, 2017, and 2020. They collected data for 159 festival editions [of 109 unique festivals] that took place in 2020 and 2021. The numbers may be a bit skewed because of how few festivals were able to take place in the pandemic, but the trend line continued from past surveys. The piece notes that there were onsite, online and hybrid festivals surveyed.
female:pressure has collected data for 833 festival editions [264 unique festivals in total] from 2012 to 2021 from 48 countries.
The ratio of women on festival lineups varied from country to country and region to region. It shouldn’t be too surprising, but there are more women booked in Europe than North America, by a significant percentage.
![Gender proportions for European [above] and North American [below] festivals [2020 to 2021] gender study](https://www.magneticmag.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_700/MTg3OTI2MDM3NjgwNjI4Nzkw/europe-na-survey.png)
Gender proportions for European [above] and North American [below] festivals [2020 to 2021]
female:pressure
When you get even more granular with countries, it becomes even starker. This chart is from 2012 to 2021.
![Gender proportion of acts by country [2012 to 2021]](https://www.magneticmag.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_700/MTg3OTI2MDM3NjgwNjk0MzIz/countries-female-male.png)
Gender proportion of acts by country [2012 to 2021]
female:pressure
The larger the festival, the more male dominated it becomes. Read the full report here to get a lot of insights into the progress that has been made, but how much more that needs to be done.
![Female, male, non-binary and mixed acts by festival size in three [above] and five [below] categories [2020 to 2021] Gender Festival Survey Size](https://www.magneticmag.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_700/MTg3OTI2MDM3NjgwNjI4Nzg3/festival-size.png)
Female, male, non-binary and mixed acts by festival size in three [above] and five [below] categories [2020 to 2021]
female:pressure
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