DJ warns of ‘boys’ club’ music industry where freelance women feel ‘unsafe’

The DJ and author Annie Macmanus has told MPs that the music industry is "a boys' club" with a system  “rigged against women".

Macmanus was giving testimony at the Government’s Women and Equalities Committee on misogyny in the music industry.

Speaking on behalf of "a real range of" women in the music industry, the former Radio 1 broadcaster said that she had not experienced or witnessed sexual misconduct personally. However, she felt her 19-year career at the BBC had given her a "shield of protection" to discuss the issue openly.

She said: “There are common threads that run through everything I've heard.

"That is that women, especially young women in the music industry, are consistently underestimated and undermined, and freelance women are consistently put in situations where they are unsafe.

"It's infuriating, the amount of women who have stories of sexual assault that just kind of buried them and carried them. It's just unbelievable.”

She added that if an individual with a high profile were to speak out, “there could be a kind of tidal wave of it.”

The singer Rebecca Ferguson also gave evidence to the MPs. She described misogyny in music as “the tip of the iceberg” and said: "Bullying and corruption are being allowed to happen".

She told MPs: "There are plenty of times when you're placed in situations where you are being compromised and where people are abusing their level of power.

"But as well as that, the thing that worries me the most is the rapes that are going unreported. That's what concerns me the most – the fact that women feel like they can't speak up.”

The committee previously questioned Sir John Whittingdale, Media, Tourism and Creative Industries Minister, about the lack of legal protections for freelancers, the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims and improving standards to tackle discrimination.