On July 7ththe team at Why Not Her? are meeting at Leinster House with Senator Marie Sherlock of the Labour Party to put forward an amended Broadcasting Bill (Gender, Cultures & Other Diversities) that ‘aims to retune Irish Radio’ towards gender parity and diversity.
Why Not Her? are calling on all TD’s Senators, Ministers and Politicians to join in a cross-party initiative to support the new Bill that has been drafted. The collective invites everyone from the music scene and anyone who is a music lover to join them at 1pm this coming Thursday at the gates of Leinster House to support and ask the question Why Not Her?
Change is happening on our airwaves but at too slow a pace. Responding to the publication of the Gender Disparity Report on music content on Irish airwaves, Labour Party Arts and Media spokesperson Marie Sherlock paid tribute to the work of the Why Not Her campaign.
“For the past three years, Why Not Her? has been holding up a mirror to broadcasters in Ireland on the disproportionate and low number of women’s voices on our airwaves. Today’s results show that over the past 12 months, change is possible by those willing to embrace greater diversity, equality and inclusion on their playlists. This is reflected with stations such as Spin FM, KCLR, Midwest, Northern Sound, 98FM, Clare FM and a number of RTÉ stations moving to ensure that at least 25% of airplay is devoted to women artists. However the reality is that for the majority of radio stations, there is a major lack of effort to showcase female-identifying artists. Over 3,200,000 people tune in radio in this country every day. As highlighted by Why Not Her, making it onto a playlist can be a life-changing experience, however, there are also great female artists who are simply not getting a platform to perform their work. We need to ensure there is a level playing field. We know that we have some brilliant emerging talent here in Ireland with Soulé, Tolü Makay, Cherry Dragon, Gemma Bradley and Denise Chaila and established talent such as Imelda May, and yet Why Not Her’s report reflects the disadvantage they are at relative to male artists. This coming Thursday at 1pm, the Labour Party will be publishing a bill to ensure greater representation of women’s voices both in spoken content and in music across all registered radio stations in this country. Change will not happen unless we push it.” – Senator Marie Sherlock
