Warped Perspective

Posted: June 19, 2014 | the scene | absolute punk, female bands, kevin lyman, warped tour, women, wondering sound | 0 Comments

Anyone that’s ever been to a Warped Tour may have noticed something odd. While the event itself is fairly evenly mixed with males and females in terms of attendance, you’d be hard pressed to find a band that has any females in it. The overwhelmingly male presence of Warped Tour bands has become somewhat of a heated topic as of late.

An article that appeared on Wondering Sound asserts that only 6% of the members of bands on Warped are female. The article also suggests that this percentage is a drastically unfair representation of females in music and takes it a step further by suggesting that the Warped Tour, and Kevin Lyman himself, has a social responsibility to put more bands with female members on the tour.

In response, a different article appeared on Absolute Punk that doesn’t refute the claim that only 6% of the tour is female and even supports the desire for including more females in the tour. However, this article says that the type of bands that Warped Tour fans are into are overwhelmingly male but that’s not the Warped Tour’s fault – it’s more of a societal issue. Absolute Punk says that Kevin Lyman and Warped run a business and give fans what they’re willing to pay to see. That is to say that Warped Tour isn’t a social justice entity and has no responsibility to book female bands if it could hurt ticket sales.

So what do you think about it? Is the lack of female presence in the scene something created by the scene itself? The scene decides which bands become big enough to play festivals like Warped Tour, so the fans do have power to decide who makes it big and who doesn’t. Or do you think that people with power, like Warped Tour, should intentionally book female bands to help balance the scene out?

Where does the responsibility lie?