Diversity & Representation · Indicator 1
Gender balance on line-ups
What this indicator asks
What share of the artists on Sydney’s event line-ups are female and gender-diverse?
59.5/ 100 · Sydney
More than 5,000 artists (1,500 with known genders) on around 7,500 Sydney event line-ups, for events dated between 1 January 2025 and 31 December 2026.
Female and gender-diverse artists make up 29.8% of artists. They are booked slightly more often: on average 2.2 events each, against 2.0 for a male artist.
A participant runs a writing camp for gender-diverse people at their studio complex:
“The writing camp that we run there is all for gender diverse people to come… it’s really removing barriers that stop people from getting in the room in the first place. And we have to think about class in that.”
An expert said the same few trans and gender-diverse performers are booked again and again. This is not the artists’ fault: but there are not enough events for enough people to build careers.
One expert said the music industry is still run largely by white cis-het people. They proposed diverse hiring policies together with advisory networks of outside experts, as MusicNSW does.