Annie Mac has pledged to tackle the “embarrassingly lopsided” gender imbalance in the music industry.
The BBC presenter has joined a campaign aiming to redress the music industry gender gap in wages, profile, and power.
Mac is supporting a drive to equalise earnings, festival line-ups, songwriting and record label ownership through affirmative action.
The Smirnoff Equalising Music campaign is pushing for those within the music industry to take action and make one change that will help the cause of women.
Equalising Music has highlighted perceived imbalance in music, citing Keychange figures which claim a 30% pay gap at major music labels, majority male festival line-ups, and an overall 70% of those involved in the industry being men.
Mac said: “The music industry is still embarrassingly lopsided when it comes to gender parity.
“We are all acutely aware of the enormous contribution women make to this business, and yet there’s still so much work to be done to ensure they’re embraced and championed, both in front of and behind the scenes.
“Contributing towards trying to change this is something I personally feel passionately about, and I’m genuinely excited to see the future impact women of all ages will have on the unchartered territories of this rapidly changing industry.”
Equalising Music is calling for direct action in the music industry, to boost the position and profile of women. The campaign is urging power-brokers and influencers within the industry to sign a pledge to ensure gender parity.
Sam Salameh, head of Smirnoff, said: “Smirnoff set up Equalising in Music in 2017 because the music industry had been sidelining female talent for too long.
“So far we’ve raised awareness of unconscious bias towards female artists with Spotify, redressed the gender imbalance at festivals including Wireless, Lost Village and Snowbombing and empowered the next generation of female talent.
“This year we’re proud to be partnering with Annie Mac, one of the UK’s leading music tastemakers and an artist widely known for championing gender-balance. We all know the statistics, so now it’s time for action.”
The campaign is seeking to accelerate the pace of change in the music industry, and was started in 2017 to help balance gender disparities in electronic music.
