FEATURE:
Overturning the Boys’ Club
IN THIS PHOTO: Delilah Bon
Why Is Rock and Alternative Slow to Redress Its Sexism and Gender Imbalance?
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WHILST some genres…
are dominated by women and one cannot refute their supremacy and talent, it does seem that there is not enough acknowledgement and support of women in Rock and Alternative. Whether leading bands or part of them, we are still seeing a gender imbalance at festivals. Even festivals revolving around Rock are not featuring enough women. It suggest that Rock is still a boys’ club. If it appears that way in terms of acts on stage and the playlists of stations like Kerrang! Radio, that is not really the reality. The women in Rock at the moment deserve to be part of the conversation. I feel this way about Hip-Hop and Rap. How there are so many incredible women and yet there is this narrative that men rule. Rock is less toxic and boys-only than it used to be, though small steps are being made to overturn this idea that it is dominated by men. This idea that women are an afterthought. Even bands and duos made up entirely of women not played and given as much stage time of their male peers. This thought came to be because of an article from the BBC from last week. With festivals starting to wind down, we can reflect on and react to line-ups of festivals. How few female Rock artists have been included in many of the line-ups:
"When we first started in the music industry, it was pretty much a boys' club," says Hannah Richardson, Cherym's lead singer and guitarist.
"We were like, why can't girls do it? There's no reason why we can't."
Hannah makes up the Londonderry punk trio with Allanagh Doherty and Emer McLaughlin and says the industry - particularly the alternative music scene - is still not where it needs to be when it comes to equality and diversity.
That was thrown into focus when earlier this week, Slam Dunk festival revealed part of its 2025 line-up, featuring only two acts that included women.
"I'm so sick of seeing of seeing line-ups that are predominantly cis, straight, white men all the time," Hannah tells BBC Newsbeat.
"Because it's not just women that are overlooked. It's black people, it's trans people, it's marginalised people in general."
The band's drummer and singer Allanagh adds that women are so overlooked in the industry, they're often mistaken for other bands' girlfriends when they show up to gigs.
Slam Dunk revealed its first line-up announcement on Wednesday for its festivals in Leeds and Hatfield, featuring bands including The Used, A Day To Remember and Neck Deep.
Of the 20 featured acts, only two - Delilah Bon and Dream State - included female musicians, sparking a disappointed reaction from fans.
"It's giving, 'for a dollar, name a woman'," Allanagh says.
Slam Dunk is one of the UK's biggest independent rock festivals and its spokesperson declined to say anything about the line-up announcement when approached by Newsbeat.
Research by the BBC in 2017 found that 80% of festival headliners were male and dozens of festivals went on to pledge to achieve a 50/50 gender split by 2022.
But by the time 2022 arrived, Newsbeat discovered that only one in 10 headliners at the UK's top music festivals were women that summer.
In 2018, campaign group Keychange presented a manifesto to the European Parliament calling for more to be done to improve representation in the industry.
This year, it released a second manifesto , external renewing that call, along with other measures to make the music industry more equitable.
Slam Dunk's 2024 line-up poster featured five acts that included women out of the 27 that were advertised - about 20% - while in 2023, it was five out of 22, or 23%.
Meanwhile Download, which is a bigger rock festival spread across three days, filled 32 of its 111 slots - just under 30% - with acts featuring women and non-binary artists this summer.
Cherym, Panic Shack and ARXX all agree the alternative scene can be a "boys' club".
In other genres though, 2024 has been punctuated by women breaking records, from Taylor Swift's Eras tour, to Sabrina Carpenter's chart domination and Glastonbury having two female headliners for the first time.
Megan says outside of those genres, there's an element of "gatekeeping" from women and Hannah says there can be an expectation of the kinds of music they should make.
"There was an assumption that we made a particular type of music because we're women," she says of when Cherym first started performing”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay/Pexels
It is clear that stations like Kerrang! Radio and Radio X – who deal more in Alternative, indie and Rock – are not playing enough women. Appalling that women and non-binary artists are seen as inferior or an afterthought. There is this boys’ club mentality in Rock journalism. Still very much the situation where Rock is geared towards white men. Great acts like Nova Twins and Panic Shack having to fight against this sexism and misogyny that runs through Rock. Though not as overtly sexist and imbalanced as perhaps it was a few years or a decade ago, look at the statistics and modern reality and you wonder why things have not improved. If there is not call for change and awareness from all in Rock then it is left to women and non-binary artists to speak. Gatekeepers, festival organisers and labels doing little to be inclusive and redress the horrifying gender imbalance through Rock’s stages, pages and stations. If legends like Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) have said that women should be positioned at the front and centre of the modern Rock scene how many of his peers are echoing these sentiments?!
It does seem like there is not enough allyship from men through Rock. The marginalisation of women and non-binary artists is evident. It is not the case that women are lacking when it comes to producing wonderful and original Rock music. It is obvious that they should be playlisted and booked for festival slots. Women are producing essential and phenomenal Rock music. Overlooked and under-represented by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Last year, the co-founder of Rolling Stone, Jann Venner, controversially stated that Black and female artists were not worthy of inclusion in his book, The Masters. For years and years, we have seen examples of the misogyny and sexism rife throughout Rock, In fact, in 2018, Garbage lead Shirley Manson spoke to Louder Sound. She was asked about her experienced and why there is such discrimination through Rock and Metal:
“Why is there a lack of women in rock and metal?
“Because the whole game of ‘rock’ was designed and maintained by the patriarchy. So if the rules are written by men, it automatically makes it very difficult for women to infiltrate, because women then have to play a man’s game and not their own game, in order to get on the board. And as it is, it’s really very difficult still for women to be treated as equal thinkers and creators in the same way that men are. It’s not enough for a woman to be a great songwriter, she has to be fuckable in order for a record company to give a fuck. And that’s patriarchy at its most terrifying.”
Rock and metal is a world where people define themselves as being more free and against the mainstream, yet there’s still a problem with female representation.
“I think the terminology surrounding rock’n’roll at this point is obsolete. Rock to me has always been more about rebellion and freedom of speech and living off-centre, and when you start having old men impose silly old rules, then it becomes something that it never was supposed to be. Music surely is supposed to continue to evolve, and change and adapt and move with the times and the political currents, and so on and so forth. It’s an old stodgy thing that has never really developed past its initial birth. When I hear someone who claims to love rock music, rock’n’roll, any kind of rebellious musical movement, tell me that women aren’t welcome and/or are incapable of being rebellious and being provocateurs or stepping outside of conformity, then I feel like laughing. I feel like dismissing that person entirely, because they’ve got the whole idea wrong. They’ve got these very stringent, strange, tiny little myopic minds that have decreed that rock’n’roll music sits within these tiny, thin parallel lines.
“To me, rock’n’roll has always been expansive. It’s an expansive idea that embraces so many different types of rebellion and provocation and resistance and political pushback. It’s all these things to me, and freedom. To be whatever you want to be. Because all the other genres of music are, to my mind when I was growing up were so much more restrictive. But to me now, rock has become that, too – it’s also become restrictive. People just want to impose rules on everyone, and fuck that. I’m fucking sick of everyone imposing rules on anybody else – it’s so tiresome. And I think that what’s sort of exciting a lot of women, currently, is as sad and awful as the #metoo movement is to bear witness to, it’s also phenomenal and very unique and unusual to hear so many female voices on a daily basis in the media, talking about the female experience, talking about the female gaze, talking about the female perspective and what female rebellion means, and what ‘pushing against the pricks’ really was about. And although it probably won’t change that much, sadly, because I feel like we’ve got such a mountain to climb, I do believe it’s educating a whole generation of young women not to put up with the fucking shit we did.”
What advice would you give to women coming up in rock and metal now?
“I’m always saying the same thing to all my girls whoever I meet, and they say the same thing, which is: Don’t. Fucking. Back. Down. Ever. It sounds so cliched, and it’s cliched because cliches exist. And it’s very hard to hold your ground in any circumstance. Whether you’re going up against another woman or another man, another idea, another system. But I think if you really have something to say and you really need to say it, then you’ll find a way to hold your ground, and it’s difficult. But it isn’t impossible, and I think there are more and more women doing it. And what is beautiful that I have really noticed lately for myself is, when I was first emerging as an artist, making music and in bands, there weren’t that many women who had come before me. It was really just a handful of women certainly that culturally we all knew of. And now that has changed so much, there’s a whole wealth of my generation, the generation after us, and the generation after them. There’s a lot of encouragement out there that didn’t necessarily exist when I was emerging, and certainly the generation before that had nobody.
“I was on tour with Debbie Harry this summer, she didn’t have anyone to look back at. She was one of the first, her and Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde and Marianne Faithfull – all these amazing creatures. Yoko Ono. They didn’t have anybody to look back at and say, ‘Well they did it. I can do it too.’ But I think that’s changing, and that’s exciting, and as a result we’re seeing a whole new wave of provocative women starting to push back. Because I think women are angry. I think women are full of rage. And you know, as a result of this #metoo movement really engulfing our cultures all over the world, we’re gonna see some repercussions to that that can only be a great thing. For not just women, but for men, too. I think men will benefit from a more egalitarian society. I love men and enjoy them and I certainly have never ever wanted a future that is fully female – that terrifies the living daylights out of me, too. I want an equal society where all genders are represented fairly. I think that’s to the benefit of everyone. My trans friends, my gay friends, they taught me things that my straight friends could never teach me, and as a result I think that speaks to how we must all move forward”.
This new BBC article that collates words from women in Rock who have experienced misogyny and sexism calls into question whether there is determination for change. So geared at being a boys’ club, it is hard for women and non-binary artists to get a foothold. It is shocking and appalling seeing how festivals, venues and stations disregard and marginalise them. Compared to Pop music, where women are ruling and dominating without much competition, Rock is not embracing and including women. Not willing to represent them on stage. It has to change. Sad that, in 2024, Rock remains this…
UNMOVING boys’ club.