Emily Eavis defends Glastonbury’s gender disparity: “We’re not publicly funded”
As the organiser of Glastonbury Festival, Emily Eavis has been under-fire this year for booking all-male headliners on the main Pyramid Stage. She has, however, since defended this decision and said that she is doing everything she can to address the gender disparity.
Speaking about the backlash, she told Cosmopolitan UK: “I do think it is very loud and shouty out there. It is a bit of a distraction, for sure. Sometimes I say well, are we the BBC or the NHS? We’re not publicly funded.”
She added: “I think everyone knows that we’re trying harder than most, certainly extremely hard to address [the gender balance of acts] and I’ve been very vocal about it. Progress isn’t linear. I’m trying my best and believe me, it’s a real, passionate subject of mine.”
She also commented that she has been trying to tackle the issue of the gender divide in the music industry herself for some time. ”I’ve been trying to raise the flag around gender and festivals for a long time,” she said. ”But we can only do so much.”
In order to facilitate this, Eavis has called for more nuanced discussion. She commented: “We’ve lost the ability to have a discussion without shouting people down. There’s nothing wrong with having a different opinion and talking about things. By not talking about it we’re not going to reach any sort of progress.”
She concluded: “I just do what I think is right. Because I don’t have an agenda, I’m just trying to do the best thing for the festival and make it as fair and equal and brilliant as possible.”
The Arctic Monkeys will headline the first night of Glastonbury on June 23rd, with Guns ‘N’ Roses playing the Saturday and Elton John closing the festival.
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