Australian music festival faces backlash after failing to feature a single woman in the lineup

Pop-up electronic music festival, Days Like This, will go ahead this weekend in Sydney, but not without some serious backlash on social media in the lead up to the event.

Woman watches live music as audience member. Source: Flickr / Jake Guild.

The new festival is receiving some harsh criticism online, due to the organisers failing to book a single woman for their major lineup. 

The music festival's website boasts that the event will include "forward-looking music policy" and a "fresh perspective on the best in global house, techno, electronica and beyond".

However, online responses show that people believe the event to be quite the opposite of "forward-looking", seeing as the headliners and major line-up is completely male.

This is the festival's debut year, which sets a rather unbecoming precedent, but the organiser agreed that a men-only lineup was simply not good enough in a statement. 

"We appreciate the honest and open feedback regarding an issue which is a serious concern for everyone," the statement reads. 

"We're sad that a number of the female artists we approached were not available for the 2017 event, and we're already in discussions with a number of female headline artists for 2018." 

The group did state that they book several shows per year, and said that it was not "a fair representation" of their "booking direction". They said, "Our goal is always to provide women with the same equal platform as men throughout the entire year".

Our goal is always to provide women with the same equal platform as men throughout the entire year.

Critics have disagreed with the given statement, saying organisers have done the opposite of 'providing an equal platform for women', and calling for booked artists who disagree with the exclusionary lineup to pull out of the festival - this evidently has not happened at the time of writing.

So, while it looks like this year's event will be going ahead without any women at all, hopefully this prime example of women's lack of representation in the male-dominated music industry will assist with some lessons being learned for the future.