in ,

Something Needs To Be Done About The Looming Gender Gap In Australian Music ASAP

Although slowly decreasing, the gender gap is still proving prominent in Australian music. And like most things, is often overlooked. When it definitely shouldn’t be.

A Triple J report for 2018 released earlier today shows that heck, we’ve got a long way to go before that gap is closed for good. The research shows males and females are gradually resembling similar figures, but there’s whole lot of fluctuation going on in the mean time.

I’ve split the research into 4 main categories to give an insight into what the numbers really show, and what they mean for the future.

#1 Radio

Something you don’t tend to take much notice of, is it? The gender of the artist that just so happens to be playing when you turn on the radio. And off the top of my head, I’d even say that there’s a fairly even split when it comes to who gets played. Well.. that’s where I’m wrong. And not for the first time.

Only 21% of the 100 top tracks were by females, whereas men dominated with 52%. A 3% increase on last year, and a 4% decrease for women. It’s not something that fills us with confidence, but as I said, results fluctuate year on year so fingers crossed we are heading in the right direction.

#2 Hottest 100

According the results taken from this years’ Hottest 100, 2017 still remains the most diverse. Which is certainly a shame, but we can’t expect a perfect split of gender. It is a competition after all. 63 of the top 100 were male artists, whilst the female contribution only lay at 21. A notably large step backwards compared to last year. Having said that, 3 non-binary/gender queer artists made their way in for the first time which is a win to be celebrated.

#3 Festivals

Having insignificant changes within the Hottest 100, I’m more than happy to say that findings from Triple J showed that the gender gap in festival line ups improved significantly in 2018. Falls Festival closed the gap completely, so hats off to those guys. Splendour’s gap was also reduced by a hefty amount, with Listen Out and Groovin’ The Moo slowly getting the message. Laneway was the only festival to increase the gap from last year, so I guess we’ll have to give them a second chance to improve it by next years’ fest.

#4 Awards

Every award, bar the J Award closed its’ gap significantly on last years number. The APRA even had 53% of nominees that were female, closing the gap and then some! The AMP’s and ARIA’s both increased the number of female nominees by 8%, which is huge for artists around Australia.

Find the full report here.

Image Source: Triple J

The Riverdale Cast Honoured Their Beloved Luke Perry In A Collection Of Tributes This Week

Leaving Neverland Director Dan Reed Says Banning MJ’s Music Totally Misses The Point