Last week a report was released by the Jaguar Foundation in the UK which aimed to progress gender diversity in UK dance music.
The Foundation attempted to showcase alarming statistics about gender in dance music, as no figures had been collated on the grand scale. The report analysed streams, festival lineup and radio airplay as well as qualitative data including roundtables, artist interviews and stakeholder interviews.
It's main key finding was that only 5% of dance tracks in the UK charts over the past two years were made solely by non-binary and female artists. Only 1% on the top 200 tracks on 12 UK radio stations featured women and non-binary artists.
The amount of non-male artists increased on line ups from 14% in 2018 to 28% in 2022 based on 14 festivals. Talking to Resident Advisor, Jaguar said that, "Another revealing aspect was how many of the women and non-binary people interviewed didn't feel safe in their workplace (AKA the club) and how there is a real lack of safety regulations,"
"There's a lack of diversity in our industry because we live in a patriarchal society [...] So we need to shake up everything up. I think the best festival or club lineup is when it's a complete mixed bag of sound, of colours, of types of people. There's a lot of work we need to do, and it all starts with representation and with all of us coming together."
You can read the full report HERE. In light of the report, we checked out our very own ARIA Dance chart to see how many non-male artists featured as a producer on the chart this year and the results were shocking yet unsurprising.
Only one female producer has featured on the top 20 dance songs in the country, with not a single female produced song landing on the chart that was released this year.
The only track to make an appearance is the 2012 smash single We Run The Night by Havana Brown featuring Pitbull. It last appeared on the chart on the 13th of June. It was released a whopping 10 years ago.
On the current dance singles charts, 20% of the songs feature a non-male artists, mainly females providing vocals for big EDM tracks. Names include Amy Shark, Ava Max and Dua Lipa.
