2015 is turning out to be a groundbreaking year when it comes to discussing the issue of equality for women in the workplace.
While some people are still scared to call themselves feminists due to a misunderstanding of the word, powerful women in the media like Beyoncé have been using their time onstage to proudly stand next to the word in giant letters – making it less and less of a taboo to identify as such.
When the Sony hack happened and the pay inequality in Hollywood was put on blast, women like Charlize Theron made a point to demand the same salary as their male coworkers.
Patricia Arquette even used her Oscar win time at the podium to point out how far women still have to come in order to reach equal pay for the same work as their male counterparts.
And now, we’re seeing it in the music industry as well.
It’s never been a secret that the music business is one of the most male dominated industries around.
If you take a look inside record labels, recording studios, and at the acts onstage, you’ll notice there are much more men filling these roles than women.
But that isn’t because there are a lack of women interested in music. Both the business and production side – as well as the performance side – have many women working their buns off before they hit that inevitable glass ceiling.
Recently, the website Tonedeaf posted some Photoshop work to highlight this issue, particularly as it relates to the big name international festival scene.
Festival posters have always given light to the strange hierarchy that exists within the music industry, with font size telling the world exactly how valuable your band is or isn’t. Headliners get huge font, while the less commercially viable bands require a magnifying glass in order to read their names.
These Photoshopped posters pointed out exactly what we expected – once you take the all-male bands out of the equation – you’re left with a bunch of mostly empty posters.
Here in Canada, we like to think we’re a little more evolved than other countries with our progressive attitude – so music website AUX decided to follow suit and Photoshop all the Canadian music festival posters to see if we fared a little better.
Low and behold, the results weren’t much different from the international posters.
Drake’s very own OVO Festival only had one name post edit, while Amnesia Rockfest had just three (stuck with bottom billing), and Bestival had four.
The good news is that NXNE’s poster highlighted equally male and female acts on its poster. As for larger festivals, Osheaga seems to be leading the way with 30 names remaining on its poster.
While it can be (and certainly is) disappointing to see such blatant sexism still rampant in 2015, the important thing to remember is that eyes are starting to open. The conversation is finally happening, and when people start talking (or Photoshopping) it forces the programmers to take notice and make changes in the years that follow.
If you look out into the crowd at any given festival, you will see an audience that is almost equally male and female – so isn’t it time that diversity is reflected back to them in the players onstage?
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