Kristen Sinclair

Founder Linda Coogan Byrne The music industry was rocked last year when publicist and consultant Linda Coogan Byrne released the Gender Disparity Data Report focusing on the amount of Irish radio airplay for domestic artists. The report crunched the numbers to reveal a staggering disparity between the number of Irish men played on national radio compared to the number of women played on the same stations. The report was collated by data logged on an industry system used to track artists’ airplay and royalties called Radiomonitor. The number of Irish women featuring in stations’ top 20 most played songs was shockingly low compared to their male counterparts. Tracks from home grown female talent made up a measly 5% of the top songs from 28 of the Republic’s main radio stations. Worse still, four stations – named and shamed as FM104, LM FM, WLR FM and South East Radio – did not feature a single local female voice in their top 20 most played tracks. Dermot Kennedy, Niall Horan and The Acad...

Lisasinson by Victoria Herranz Spanish garage rock is almost entirely synonymous with Hinds , the rambunctious, all-female band who took Madrid’s sounds to international ears in 2016 with their jangly debut Leave Me Alone . Formed in 2011 by Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote, the frontwomen joined forces with bassist Ade Martín and drummer Amber Grimbergen to become Spain’s most internationally successful indie export, sparking an interest in the Spanish capital’s thriving underground scene. For a country raised on the tontipop of Las Ketchup , Eurodisco acts like Baccara and hallmarks of tradition like Julio Iglesias , a new generation of bands were emerging who had always had to look abroad for the ramshackle rock ‘n’ roll sounds that their own country wasn’t making. As the now well-documented Madrid scene came to light, it became clear that not since the countercultural Movida Madrileña movement in the 70s and 80s following Franco’s dictatorship had the city’s scene been so vi...

A small, rough-and-ready zine I made at GRSNI & UsFolk: Zine Workshop as part of Belfast's International Women's Day celebrations (9th March 2019). The zines made in the workshop were based on the theme of women that inspire you, so I chose to focus on some of the wonderful female acts on the local NI music scene.

F*EMS (Females* for Equality Making Stuff),  as it appears in print At first glance, it may not be that noticeable. When festival season comes around each summer, something is almost consistently missing from lineups across the globe: women. This is never clearer than when festival posters are displayed with only acts featuring at least one female member, and the results are dire. That’s where Lineups Without Males comes in. The Australia and New Zealand-based Instagram account of the same handle (@lineupswithoutmales) highlights the gender disparity and male-dominated festival scene in Australasia, which is reflected across the world. The account posts edited versions of festival posters with the male acts removed, juxtaposed with the original to draw attention to the huge empty spaces in many lineups. The account creators crunch the numbers to caption each post with the percentage of artists which feature a non-male member on each bill. Some of the findings are especi...

This article originally appeared in The Tab here . Source: All photos my own. Yesterday saw close to a thousand people take to the streets of Belfast to march in the city’s second ever Rally for Choice, in support of abortion reform across Ireland. Taking place two weeks after the sixth annual March for Choice in Dublin, the City Centre was awash in a sea of purple as people of all ages, genders and sexualities united to call for an end to the outdated and discriminatory abortion laws which harm pregnant people in the North and beyond. Assembling at Buoy Park, the procession made its way through the City Centre past the City Hall, before finishing in the Cathedral Quarter with a series of guest speakers. Marching to a slightly different drum beat than Belfast residents are used to, hundreds lined the streets in solidarity with the protesters who led chants of “Get your rosaries off my ovaries”, “Our bodies, our lives, our right to decide” and “Hey mister, get your laws...