Musicians Union hits out at lack of gender balance at TRNSMT festival

The 2019 mostly male line-up comes despite promises made last year by organisers DF Concerts that they were “committed to doing better”.

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TRNSMT, taking place on Glasgow Green this July for the third year, announced its line-up last Monday with big name acts including Stormzy, Catfish and the Bottlemen, George Ezra and Gerry Cinnamon.

But out of 46 acts announced on both the main and King Tut stages over the three-day festival, which runs from July 12-14, only six – Jess Glynne, Sigrid, Mabel, Jade Bird, Mahalia and Catherine McGrath – are female solo acts, none of whom is headlining.

There is just one female only band – The Big Moon – while two bands performing – Whenyoung and Skinny Lister – include one woman a-piece.

The others are all-male outfits taking the proportion of either all-male or male dominated acts to 85%. DF Concerts faced backlash on social media as a result.

The Musicians Union (MU) which has been campaigning on the issue, said this year’s gender balance was “disappointing” and urged organisers DF Concerts to join UK festivals who have pledged to work towards 50/50 gender balanced bills by 2022.

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Last year 45, including Celtic Connections, Sonica Festival, XpoNorth and the BBC Proms, signed up to the commitment to gender equality, which was drawn up by Keychange and the PRS Foundation.

The pledge aims to create a “better, more inclusive music industry for present and future generations”. It is supported by Scottish Garbage star Shirley Manson, who recently called the music industry’s lack of equality “insane”.

In 2017 a BBC survey found 80% of festival headliners across the UK were male.

Caroline Sewell, Scottish organiser for the Musicians Union, said: “It is disappointing to see such a male dominated line up [at TRNSMT], particularly at a point in time where the industry is trying to raise awareness and tackle the problem of the lack of female representation on line ups like this.”

Many promoters and organisers say the lack of gender balance reflects market realities, insisting that they have tried to book women, but found they are unavailable because there are not enough successful touring musicians.

Sewell said MU did acknowledge that there are less established female artists and bands than there are male – but insisted line-ups could still be improved.

“The MU fully supports projects such as PRS for Music Foundation’s Keychange initiative, which seeks to empower women by aiming for a 50/50 gender balance on festival billings by 2022,” she added.

“While this may seem aspirational, given where we currently are, we really hope that TRNSMT and other festivals will get on board for the sake of a better, more representative industry and for the benefit of audiences who are more than ready for more interesting and diverse line ups.”

Emma Ritch, executive director of feminist organisation Engender, said audiences deserved better. She added: “Decades after Kathleen Hanna [American singer and riot grrrl] called ‘girls to the front’ we still see a massive over-representation of men in the music industry, whether as artists, managers, or promoters. But even with that over-representation the TRNSMT line-up is still staggeringly male and stale. They and other Scottish festivals need to do more to meet the demand for gender diversity on stage. Girls and women deserve to see more of themselves in these totemic Scottish events.”

Last year TRNSMT boss Geoff Ellis admitted in an interview that there was “a long way to go” with gender balance across festival line-ups but claimed he was “committed to doing more”.

Last week he told music magazine NME that he would “prefer to have more female artists on the bill” but work was needed to develop them into headliners.

But DF did not respond to the Sunday National’s request for comment.