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Sad statistics of gender equality in club and festival lineups

Gender equality among artists  in nightclubs has been talked about for a long time. It goes without saying,  that the majority of event  managers, residents and guest DJs are male.

This very article is about club headliners and gender statistics, so if you are interested in the issue, check what we found out.

The average ratio of female to male DJs in the lineups of clubs and festivals equals 1 to 12.

Festivals

Let's start with the statistics, collected by our editors.  After some investigation we have come to very disappointing data. Only 7 per cent of female DJs were in the lineups of 20 top festivals, held around the world, in 2018. This is a general trend that is not dependent on country or music style.

The most inequitable in the gender ratio were ULTRA festivals, regardless of the host country, percentage of female DJs in the lineup did not exceed 3%. Data for 2019 is almost identical.

Impossible to rejoice that there are festivals that include a large number of female DJs like Tomorrowland, Glitch, Creamfields, Time Warp, to name a few, hence they have less preconceptions. There are also such festivals as Dreamfields or Mysteryland which can have over 50 artists in a row and not a single female DJ.

Clubs

Let us focus on clubs now. Here we can observe certain regional trends and music style trends.

General statistics also is not comforting, but at first we decided to divide the clubs into 3 categories, as considering the location of the club on the world map and the musical direction, the number of female DJs was significantly different. We give the statistics of each group and then show the total.

The first group of clubs - top clubs with capacity for over 1000 people and regular world-class DJs guests. We took 150 clubs from 2018 top rankings (DJANEMAG, DJMag and International Nightlife Association). In these clubs, the average annual supply of female DJs is 6%. It must also be noted that this is a rather short and regular list of female DJs. No more than 15 female DJs or duos attend these clubs at top guests.

The second group of clubs - clubs that have big popularity and organizing parties with good DJs,  but their budgets significantly inferior to the top clubs.  Capacity of these clubs starts from 500 people, but among them there are also very big clubs. In such clubs the annual percentage of female DJs is about 10%.

The third group - clubs with small budgets and capacity ranging from 300 to 1000 people. These clubs are often more budget target audience oriented. Due to these clubs the percentage is already growing up to 18%, primarily this type is located in the countries of the South- East Asia, Australia, Brazil and some techno clubs in Europe.

In general, the percentage is 11% and the most important and sad figure is the statistics of the top clubs as it is only 6%.

Reasons

The main reason for such poor statistics is the desire of the organizers to place in the lineups only the loudest and most famous names as well as following  all sorts of arrangements an contracts.

The participation of many DJs in big festivals gives not only the huge number of guests but also for DJs themselves serves as a good promotion and an opportunity to raise their fees in the future.

Why female DJs do not get trust of the organizers ?... they are less professional or less talented or they lack emotions – Sure it is false!

The main reason is primarily the popularity of one or another DJ that makes his or her name desirable at any festival. The popularization of female DJs and their worldwide recognition is needed to fix the situation. There is an enormous potential for improving these statistics and firstly, it depends on the major players in this segment who should pay their attention to female DJs.

In many countries and clubs, there has been a tendency that female DJs to be perceived primarily as a beautiful addition to the club’s picture and it beauty stands higher than professionalism. Often this applies to clubs with a dominant male audience.

The  disappointment in music of such DJs due to the fact that emphasis was originally put not on music, but on beauty,  slows down the growth of many talented female DJs and justifies a negative attitude of many people from a club industry to the girls behind the decks. Often this applies only to commercial music, while female DJs playing techno, hardcore or trance are more respected in the music world.

DJANEMAG appeared  primarily to correct these statistics and support female DJs in different countries and the companies that work  and promote them.

For the last 5 years, thanks to some event companies, the attitude towards female DJs has changed in many countries. The majority of girls have already begun to produce their own music and the promotion of social pages and photo shoots has faded into the background. 10 years ago, especially in Asian countries, there was a huge need for beautiful girl DJs, but for 10 years this market has been saturated and now other requirements come to the fore. An increase in the number of female DJs led to a drop in fees, but this is only at first glance, simply if earlier all the female DJs were often brought under the same fees depending on the country, now the difference in fees is very high and today the price forms the name and popularity of this or that DJ.

Returning to the statistics, we would like to add that since the creation of our magazine ( since 2013), the number of female DJs in Europe has grown 3 times, North America and Africa 4 times, South America and Australia 5 times and just imagine, the number of female DJs in Asia has increased 20 times! Undoubtedly, these quantity must grow into quality and new world stars but it will not happen without equalizing the number of female and male DJs in the line-ups of the best festivals and clubs.

The ratio of male and female festival and clubs guests is approximately 50 to 50 so let's try to achieve that and the ratio between female and male artists on stage will also become 50 to 50.

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