In the comments of yesterday's post on the most booked callers and bands, several people were interested in the gender composition of the bands. I looked at this in 2018, covering four years of data (2014 through 2017); what does it look like now?
I took my stats for 2023 and 2024 [1] and attempted to annotate the gender breakdown of the bands. This is a fraught endeavor: gender is not always obvious. In cases where it seemed unclear I looked at band websites, and when it was still unclear I looked for publicity that referred to musicians with pronouns.
The biggest change from last time is the number of non-binary musicians. I didn't count any as non-binary in 2014-2017 (which might have been a mistake), while for 2023-2024 I count 2% of musicians. And 10% of bookings contained at least one non-binary musician.
I'd like to plot something meaningful that I can compare across years, and it would be much clearer with two axes, so here's bookings by number of men vs number of non-men:
The total is essentially the same: 77% male in 2014-2017, 76% male 2023-2024, but the distribution has shifted in interesting ways:
There are now more than zero duo and trio bookings with no men, and a noticeable increase in trios with one man. I had initially expected to see that the overall balance had shifted away from men (which it hasn't) and I think my impression was driven by seeing these groups. The largest contributors here are Eloise &Co. and River Road.
All the solo bookings with one non-man are Rushfest, but I'm not sure the decrease there is real: dance weekends are very inconsistent at listing Rushfest gigs, and I've often missed them.
The increase in trio bookings with three men is primarily Playing with Fyre, the Dam Beavers, and Drive Train.
That these seem to be driven by individual bands suggests we shouldn't trust individual buckets too much. How sensitive is the overall ratio, though? The totals are based on 1,032 booked individuals for the smaller 2023-2024 set, so if one of the top bands (~15 bookings over two years) had a female member replace a male one or vice versa that would bring the totals up to 79% or down two 73%.
If there are other ways of slicing this data that would be helpful in answering this question, let me know!
[1] This means the same caveats apply: I'm not counting bands without
names, bands that played fewer than two weekends/festivals/etc in a
year, ways that the lineup at the gig might differ from what's on the
band website, etc.