How Women In EDM Are Fighting Sexism With Success

By Shammara Lawrence


“I'm an artist. I'm not a lady artist. I'm a woman and I'm delighted of being a woman and I love being a woman. Although my art doesn't have a gender also it never has,” Alison Wonderland (née Alexandra Sholler) emphatically says over the phone two days before her early August headlining set at HARD Summer out in Fontana, California. A conversation about the way people treat ladies in EDM has the Sydney-born and Los Angeles-based DJ-producer riled up — and understandably so.


Being a woman in music comes with a unique set of challenges — household names like Tiësto or Martin Garrix don’t get asked about being a gentleman in EDM — and is rife with people constantly commenting on your gender as an alternative opposed to your work. Alison Wonderland is over it. She’s a sonic powerhouse in her own right, headlining sold-out arenas around the globe and clocking millions of streams across Spotify and iTunes. Her 2018 sophomore album Awake hit No. 1 on Billboard's ​Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart. To date, she’s highest-billed female DJ at Coachella alongside Canadian DJ REZZ (with hopefully more to come soon). And recently, Billboard named her one of the 100 top DJs of 2019.


“[Speak] about me as an artist who just sold out two Red Rocks [shows and is] making albums and pushing music forward,” she tells MTV News.


In recent years, there’s been a lot of conversation about representation of girls in EDM, which is, like most of them of the industry, dominated by gentlemen. They rule the charts, radio airwaves, and media headlines. Yet nowhere is the gender disparity more visible than festival lineups. Scan the posters of your preference dance festivals and you'll typically find just several female names, if any at all. In a 2016 study, the dance music website Thump revealed only 17 percent of headliners at electronic music festivals were females. So what can be done to diversify EDM and the live music scene? Meagan Deschenes, the head of HARD Events, has an eas answer: prioritize diversity in bookings. In her role, she oversees the daily operations of all HARD-branded concerts and festivals for Insomniac Events. One of their biggest events is HARD Summer, the hip-hop-cum-EDM festival headlined by Wonderland this year, and conceived by Gary Richards, the founder and former CEO of HARD Events.


While curating each year’s lineup, Deschenes, who’s been with the business since 2007, makes it her mission to amplify emerging talent, especially ladies. “I really like to book new people [other] people might not directly even know about, just to educate more fans on other good music that's out there. .... And I really make a conscious task to find as several girls as I can. If [only] people could visualize how several offers I sent out to book girls versus how several I actually was able to get. I sent so several. I really attempt to create the lineup diverse [so it has] something for everyone,” she tells MTV News.


Music has no boundaries and spans cultures., So people of all backgrounds should be allowed to participate without judgment, says GG Magree, a Australian DJ, producer, vocalist, who’s been making waves in the dance-music sphere for her mesmerizingly sweet vocals and high-energy live sets. “I just think that in the event you pocket things, it's just not the correct way to do things. Music is universal. It should be open,” Magree stresses to MTV News over the phone right after a whirlwind weekend performing at HARD Summer.


For the 12th year, 170,000 music fans converged at the Auto Speedway in Fontana from August 3 to 4 to watch a medley of artists — from heavies like Alison Wonderland, Kid Cudi, Major Lazer, and Claude VonStroke to up-and-comers like Cam Girl, DreamDoll, and LP Giobbi. Notably, an array of female talent was front and center, thanks in part to Deschenes’s booking efforts.


GG Magree shook Saturday’s crowd with high-octane energy. Later at night, Alison Wonderland’s treated fans to an explosive and headbanging mix. And on Sunday, fans got a taste of some gritty trap from Cam Girl and new music from LP Giobbi. This kaleidoscopic and variegated lineup injected some much-needed diversity into a genre historically ruled by white gentlemen.


Although several female dance musicians often find themselves having to prove to their peers that they’re not just not a pretty face. “People on the outdoors [are always] thinking you fucked your way into the industry. I worked my fucking ass off to be here,” Cam Girl tells MTV News. “I did not have to do anything to do that with the exception of hard work, not sleeping, [and] not going out. I lost all of my companions from practicing and getting better with my craft. I just want some recognition for the hard work that goes in back of this as a substitute opposed to [people being] just like, ‘Oh, you're just cute.’”


As a L.A.-Based DJ/producer, a co-owner of Animal Talk Records, and an all-around synth master, LP Giobbi understands how frustrating it might be for females in the industry, constantly having their talents and capabilities questioned. So in 2019, she created an inclusive nonprofit workshop called Femmehouse, an educational platform addressing the lack of representation of girls in electronic music by holding monthly workshops where musicians can learn how to produce and engineer music. “When you walk out of this room with the knowledge of something new, I want you to feel empowered; you could right now take this skill set as well as just knowing that you could do something and make something in other parts of your life. That’s a powerful tool,” she says.


One notable reason LP Giobbi believes there might be a big gender and racial gap in the dance world is because of high expenditures connected with creating music, which can be a hindrance for people without the required resources. Femmehouse is on a mission to change that. “A big, big barrier for producers is cash. Gear is really expensive, computers are expensive, headsets are expensive. It's been really key for me attempt to help lower that barrier to entry and then also making a safe space with a bunch of other ladies to ask whichever questions you must ask. I've Been given a lot of possibilities and it's my duty to pay that forward,” she says.


In the late 1970s, home music — to which several of today’s dance musicians can trace their roots — was place on Earth out of Chicago’s gay, Black party scene to radically break down racial, sexual, and gender barriers. Since then, the sound has transformed, due in part to the rebranding efforts of the U.S. Music industry, and in turn, the face of it has fully changed — with names like Calvin Harris, David Guetta, and Martin Garrix leading the pack. Yet for a genre descended from a subculture thriving with both diversity and political struggle, dance music will suffer if only a handful of artists are showered with attention.


Cam Girl looks at the progress made for now and thinks it’s just a matter of time. Yet she also stressed how essential it is for organizers to keep making it happen. “When I began going to electronic music festivals, there was like maybe one, maybe two female DJs. Right now, shout out to Alison Wonderland, shout out to Anna Lunoe — they're killing it. Mija, all those ladies. Yet in the event you look at ladies like me and other ones, we're not playing the main stages and we're not playing the main set times. And I'm just waiting up until it's like 50/50,” she mentioned.


As this year’s HARD Summer proved, girls are killing the game across the spectrum of dance music, proving that your gender does not define your success. And all of the females interviewed for this story remain hopeful about the future of EDM, especially Deschenes, who’s been working in the industry for over a decade. “I've seen it evolve a lot. As soon as we first began HARD, there really [were not] any girls, so from then to right now, there really are some big top ladies that can headline a stage [and] can headline a festival and are making equal cash [to] men,” she mentioned. “It's just finding more of these, because right now there's only so several and right now there's so several festivals, it's sort of a fight to get to share them.”