Older women almost completely missing from this year’s UK music festival headliners

Just one female act over 50 has been selected to headline any of the UK’s 20 most popular music festivals this summer – once again highlighting the exclusion of older women in arts and entertainment.  

Artists headlining a music festival this summer are more likely to be called Richard than be a woman over the age of 50, analysis by Centre for Ageing Better shows. While Grace Jones (Camp Bestival) is the only female over 50 headlining any of the biggest UK music festivals this summer, solo acts or bands fronted by men aged 50 or above make up around a third of festival headliners included in the analysis - highlighting the twin forces of ageism and sexism. The exclusion of older women from stage line-ups is out of touch with the changing demographic of customers attending music festivals.

Almost one in three festival-goers in the UK is over the age of 40 while three in five attendees are women. Older households account for more than half of the UK’s consumer spending with almost double the spending power of younger households and are more willing to pay for a VIP festival experience, which makes the ageist exclusion of older female performers a bad business move too.

The analysis also reflects issues highlighted in the Centre for Ageing Better’s recent analysis of the British film industry with academics from the University of West London School of Film, Media and Design which revealed that female characters aged 65 and over are three times less likely than male characters of the same age to be featured in British films over the last decade. Our Cast Aside report also found empowered, active and rounded older female characters were rare and older women were much more commonly portrayed as passive, pitiable, ridiculed for failing to act their age and often irrelevant to the main plot. ]

The findings also chime with the Centre for Ageing Better’s recent Ageism: What’s the harm? report which detailed how older people are increasingly under-represented in advertising. Only one in four (25%) TV ads feature characters aged 50 or older last year, down from 29% in 2020, the report detailed. Just one in 20 TV ads feature characters aged 70 or older and depictions of the oldest people in society are rarer still.

“Once again we see an example where society’s age problem means there is no space or provision for older women. In many aspects of public life, we see older women pushed to the margins. Such attitudes reduce many women to feeling negative about the way they age because they see how little value society affords them.

“The double standards applied to older male performers and older female performers also shows how powerful the twin forces of ageism and sexism remain. Our Age-friendly Movement is pushing back against ageism, calling time on the pervasive and damaging prejudice, but we know the battle will only ever be half won if we don’t also overcome the widespread sexism, racism and ableism that is still so prominent in society.”

The Centre for Ageing Better analysis finds that only one in ten main stage acts at the UK’s biggest festivals this summer are over 50 and there are no women aged over 50 performing at either Radio 1’s Big Weekend or the Reading and Leeds Festival. At Glastonbury, women aged 50+ front four main stage acts (Texas, Amadou and Mariam, Blondie, Bristol Windrush) out of a total of 21.

At Latitude, six of the festival’s 20 main stage acts are over 50 but none are women. There are just two acts led by women over 50 (Gabrielle and Blondie) appearing among the 24 main stage acts at the Isle of Wight festival.

"The stats from this year’s festivals are sadly unsurprising. Our society does not adequately support women to pursue artistic careers beyond a certain age, impeding their progress and limiting the number who can reach the echelons of headliners. Coupled with the consequences of outdated gender stereotypes, access and visibility for older diverse women in these positions is poor.”

To challenge ageism across society, the Centre for Ageing Better is building an Age-friendly Movement, bringing together supporters to help raise awareness and campaign on the issue, in a bid to change how people think, feel and act about ageing.

This Autumn, we will be launching a bold new public campaign tackling the scourge of everyday ageism. It will aim to overturn the negative attitudes within society towards older people through a collective and nationwide approach.