Book More Women

ABOUT this week’s guest:

If you are a regular listener to Sheroes you have heard me and my guests talk about the Instagram account Book More Women a lot. and there's a good reason for that. Since 2018, Book More Women has become the most visually impactful and data driven destination to see the gender balance, or as is often the case, imbalance, of music festival lineups. Let's revisit why this is important. As a musician, touring and performing at music festivals is vital to making a living. So put simply: if women and gender expansive folks aren’t getting the gigs, they are less likely to be able to make a career out of being a musician. Add the pressures that come when we age in this business, sometimes including becoming a parent, and we can begin to understand some of the interconnected factors that make career longevity in music unsustainable, particularly for women. For the first 8 years as the founder and data analyst of Book More Women, Abbey Carbonneau mostly anonymously and wholly independently, became our U.S. music festival watchdog, turning her passion for music and talent for analytics into an industry-impacting Instagram account, researching thousands of artists and editing hundreds of lineup posters to show what those posters would look like if only the women and non-binary artists were on them, providing both a visual and a statistical representation of gender diversity at music festivals. Over the last year, Abbey has grown Book More Women into an organization, established a board of directors, and now serves as its executive director. With a relaunch came a couple of exciting new direct impact initiatives already underway, and the challenge of fundraising for this next chapter. I'm thrilled to welcome back Abbey Carbonneau of Book More Women as this week’s Shero in the spotlight.