Triple j’s Hack team (spearheaded by Ange McCormack) has published its third annual investigation into the gender gap in Aussie music by the numbers, and its findings have once again revealed that industry continues to be dominated by men across almost every level.
Triple j’s Hack team has published its third annual investigation of the gender gap in Aussie music by the numbers, and there’s still a long way to go.
Through investigating different sectors of the industry, from radio play to professionals in the industry to festival lineups, over a three-year period, the survey presents a holistic overview of the gender gap and the direction we are heading as a whole.
“Some improvements toward gender equality were made in 2017,” the opening statement reads, “with a greater representation of women on some festival line-ups like Laneway; plus there were some increases in the number of women receiving certain award nominations, receiving music grants, and appearing in triple j’s Hottest 100.”
However, the industry still has a long way to go before the gap is closed.
In terms of radio play, data from radio monitoring company Aircheck reveals that “male artists always make up the bulk, if not majority, of the top 100 most-played songs” and that “solo-female artists or all-female acts are severely underrepresented”, making up just 28% of the most-played songs.
Females who list their profession as “music professional” as their job on the latest census reveals a large gap – just 29% – despite more female students studying a music-related subject in year 12 than males, and roughly the same amount studying music at uni.
The gender split on festival lineups is still pretty grim too. “The national musical festival circuit is still dominated by male artists,” the study reveals. “None of Australia’s major touring festivals have reached gender parity on their lineups in three years.”
On a positive note, a balance is emerging for recipients of music grants with women receiving 53% of the spend on grants from the Australia Council for the Arts. And, despite female APRA members earning less on average than men, this gap has nearly halved in ten years.
Read the extensive investigation here.
