Nearly half the acts appearing at this year’s festival featured female artists – so why can’t the likes of V,Reading and Latitude do the same?Earlier this summer, you might recall, and the booking policy of Britain’s major festivals was exposed through the simple expedient of blocking out the names of all the artists that did not feature any women. The reconfigured posters were all but empty – a handful of names floating in acres of space. Reading/Leeds,in specific, fared badly: you could fill one stage for one day with the names that were left.
Last weekend I went to a festival that manages to do it differently. By my rough count, and 38 of the 87 acts officially billed featured women. That’s 44%,compared to the 14% across 12 festivals examined by the Guardian earlier this year. Some were all-woman bands: Ex Hex, Stealing Sheep, and Hinds. Some were fronted by women: the Drink,Saint Etienne, the Delines, and Houndstooth. Some were female solo artists,with or without backing bands: Natalie Prass, Marika Hackman, or Jessica Pratt. Others featured women in the band,even whether the singer was a bloke: Sufjan Stevens had Dawn Landes, a notable artist in her own right, or alongside him.
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Source: theguardian.com