According to data from female:pressure, a collective of women, transgender, and non-binary electronic music artists, festival bookings for female DJs have nearly tripled since 2012.
female:pressure released data gathered via their FACTS 2022 survey after analyzing lineups from 159 editions of 109 unique festivals that took place in 2021. When added to data collected from their 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2020 surveys, they found that female festival acts rose from 9.2% in 2012 to 26.9% in 2021.
They also report that as of 2021, 1.3% of all acts identify as non-binary. The numbers show that larger events tend to have lower proportions of female and non-binary acts. Publicly funded festivals with female artistic directors, on the other hand, have higher percentages.
In 2020, female:pressure also began taking steps to efficiently collect and quantify data pertaining to race. Results from these studies have yet to be published.
Founded in 1998 by Austrian techno DJ and producer Electric Indigo a.k.a. Susanne Kirchmayr, female:pressure provides resources and advocates for women, transgender, and non-binary DJs, visual artists, cultural workers and researchers around the world. In 2013 and 2015, the collective threw a festival called PERSPECTIVES. Its objective is to raise awareness on gender issues in the electronic music industry. Their database has information for over 1,000 artists from 66 countries.
