For the first time, there are more women than men in the performers of the biggest festival in the Nordic countries

On Wednesday For the first time, women are the majority of performers at the Roskilde festival that started in Denmark.

Nearly 200 concerts are held during the event, with 41 percent of performers being women, 35 percent men, 22 percent mixed lineups, and two percent non-binary artists.

Denmark’s Radio According to (DR) or Danish Public Broadcasting, the gender distribution in Roskilde has slowly but consistently changed over the course of more than ten years. In 2013, there were only nine percent female artists, 75 percent male, and 17 percent mixed ensembles.

In 2019, the proportion of women had risen to 29 percent, and after a two-year corona break in the summer of 2022, both women and men were equally 41 percent.

Organized since 1971, Roskilde is the largest festival in the Nordic countries, with an average of 85,000 paying customers present every day this year. It has previously been a pioneer in many matters, such as waste management, recycling and safety issues. Many of the solutions that were successful in Roskilde have also been implemented at other Nordic and European festivals.

Gender distribution Roskilde is also an exception in Denmark, where the majority of performers at other big festivals are still male.

Roskilde’s program director Differently True says in an interview with DR that the gender of the performers has become a focus area in the program planning, similar to music genre and geography.

Roskilde is a general festival whose program includes, in addition to the most popular pop and rock, various marginal genres and world music.

The festival has used experts specializing in equality for help. In addition, it included new members in the program committee. In the application forms, they were not initially asked about their gender or even their name.

When preparing the program, volunteer young talent scouts were also used as help. According to Anders Wahren, young people listen to music in a different way than professionals who have been in the music industry for a long time, and therefore the gender distribution in their choices is more varied.

The software created with the new method has also interested Roskilde’s audience.

“We sold out the festival earlier than last year, so there’s nothing to suggest that people don’t want the program we have to offer,” says Wahren.

The festival has suffered some cancellations this summer, among which were female headliners Silence and Kali Uchis.

Also In Finland, festivals have woken up to think about the gender distribution of performers. It has been most difficult to apply for equality at events whose program profile is based on a heavily male-dominated music genre such as rap or metal.

The male majority is also strong at middle-of-the-road pop and rock festivals. In June HS toldthat only two women performed on stage at Raumamere’s midsummer festival, which is one of the most popular midsummer festivals.

Yle compared the gender distribution of performers at nine large domestic festivals. The proportion of women has grown somewhat over the past ten years, even at rap and metal festivals, but there were still more men than women in all the comparison events.

When you add up all the others except Miesartistit and all-male bands, the distribution looks different.

The combined share of women, mixed ensembles and people of different genders is more than 50 percent at least in Flow, Provinss, Sideways and Ruisrock. According to the same breakdown, the share of non-men in Roskilde is 65 percent this year.

According to the statistics of the organizers of the Flow festival, 58 percent of Flow’s performers this summer are non-male.

5.7. at 8:58 am: Corrected information about the gender distribution of domestic festivals. Earlier in the story, it was wrongly claimed that less than half of the performers in all the compared events were non-men.