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Danish music festival to guarantee 50 percent female lineup

The Tønder Festival says it will ensure 50 percent of its performers in future are female.

Published: 12 December 2018 18:01 CET

Danish music festival to guarantee 50 percent female lineup

Sinead O'Connor plating at the Tønder Festival in 2013. Photo: Casper Dalhoff/AP/POLFOTO/arkiv/Ritzau Scanpix

Last year, around 40 percent of the lineup was female at the folk music event in the South Jutland town, DR writes.

That proportion will soon become a 50-50 balance, according to organizers, who have announced the festival’s participation in the international Keychange programme, which seeks to increase the number of female artists on festival stages.

“We already have many women on stage at Tønder, and we naturally want to continue that. It’s a natural choice for us to support the Keychange project,” Tønder Festival artistic leader Maria Theessink said.

By aligning itself with Keychange, Tønder Festival pledges to reach a distribution of 50 percent female and 50 percent male artists on its programme by 2022.

Around 150 international festivals are part of the project, which is led by NGO PRS Foundation, with the support of the European Union’s Creative Europe programme.

Spanish festival Primavera was reported earlier this month to have booked equal numbers of men and women for its 2019 edition, which will take place in May.

Danish festivals have in the past been criticized for having too few female singers and bands on their lineups. In 2018, 27 percent of the artists at the Roskilde Festival were female, while at NorthSide that figure was just 12 percent, according to a DR count.

READ ALSO: Parents ridiculed for complaining to Roskilde Festival over camping areas

Nurses during a walkout at Kolding hospital on September 27th. A new committee is to look at the wage structure in Denmark's public sector, offering long term hope for improved wage equality.

Nurses during a walkout at Kolding hospital on September 27th. Photo: Søren Gylling/Jysk Fynske Medier/Ritzau Scanpix

Parliament in August intervened to settle a dispute over a new collective bargaining agreement between the nurses’ trade union DSR and regional health authority employers, ending union-sanctioned strikes which had been ongoing throughout the summer.

Strikes authorised and announced by unions, when negotiations over new working conditions break down, are permitted and recognised as a legitimate part of Denmark’s labour model.

But nurses have continued to protest against the agreement by conducting unauthorised walkouts in September and October. That action remains ongoing despite the Arbejdsretten labour court issuing fines against nurses involved in it and DSR urging them to end the walkouts.

EXPLAINED: Why has the government intervened in Denmark’s nurses strike?

A committee has now been set down to scrutinise wage structures in Denmark’s public sector, offering a glimmer of hope of finding a way out of the deadlock.

Economics professor and former head of the Danish Economic Councils Torben M. Andersen will lead the commission, the Ministry of Employment said in a statement.

In June, nurses voted against accepting the collective bargaining agreement, arguing that wages for their profession are lagging behind pay levels in other fields.

It is that agreement that was later implemented via the government intervention.

The wages committee will analyse pay structures and the consequences of any changes to them. The results of the work are to be presented as soon as possible, although the final deadline is the end of 2022.

Minister for employment and equality Peter Hummelgaard welcomed the appointment of the committee and recognised that Denmark does not have wage equality.

“But we must also recognise that it’s a complex debate and we need to make an informed basis that can form the background to future collective bargaining negotiations in the public sector,” the minister said.

“This is important work which the government obliges itself to follow up on,” he added.

Several professional sectors in Denmark, including nurses, have pointed to a 1969 wage law as the culprit in leaving a lot of female-dominated professions lagging on pay.

The 1969 wage reform, tjenestemandsreformen, placed public servants on 40 different pay grades, with sectors traditionally seen as dominated by women, such as nursing and childcare, given lower pay than jobs such as teacher or police officer.

A petition demand an end to the decades-old wage hierarchy failed in parliament earlier this year.

READ ALSO: Why Danes want to boost equality by scrapping a 1969 public sector pay reform

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