Linda Coogan-Byrne on demanding change in music: 'A lot of female artists felt validated'

A stalwart of Ireland’s music scene, publicist and manager Linda Coogan-Byrne has made it her mission to call out the structural sexism and racism she sees in her field. As she releases her first book, she shares with Aoife Barry her manifesto for change

Linda Coogan-Byrne calls for a reckoning with structural sexism in the music world in her new book

Many years ago, music publicist, consultant and label manager Linda Coogan-Byrne didn’t think of herself as a feminist. But now she has published her first book, Why Not Her? A Manifesto for Culture Change, which calls for a reckoning with structural sexism in the music world, as well as with other prejudices, like racism. To Coogan-Byrne, now a proud feminist, the issues seen in the music industry show us exactly what the wider world is dealing with on the road to equality.

After starting to work in the music industry, she says “it was impossible not to see the nuances of sexism and the nuances of misogyny”. In her book, she details the challenges faced by women to reach gender parity on music festival line-ups and radio playlists and why it’s important that not just a few voices are heard.

She writes that culture change “starts with a willingness to evaluate ourselves, our systems, and the underlying injustices that shape our world”, and that the manifesto “is more than a call to action – it’s an invitation to reflect, a challenge to confront systemic bias, and a roadmap for meaningful, lasting change”. She looks at some of the roots of sexism in the music industry, the work she has done with the organisation Why Not Her?, and how readers can do their own work of resistance in order to help ‘break the cycle’.

Linda Coogan-Byrne: In the UK they’d listen to you. But in Ireland, it was tumbleweed

Why Not Her?’s surveys of gender balance on radio in Ireland began in 2020. Overall, the reports made for depressing reading. While RTÉ Radio One consistently showed gender balance in terms of the ratio of male to female artists it played, many other stations didn’t. While some stations have improved over the years, others haven’t.

The roots of the Why Not Her? surveys and this latest book lie in the covid lockdowns, when Coogan-Byrne began attending feminist lectures and seminars online by the likes of UK music consultant Vick Bain. One night she was using the industry platform Radiomonitor, which provides data on what bands are played on the radio, and realised this data would give an insight into gender balance in the Irish radio world.

“I just said, right: I’ll just do a ballpark, five-year period of looking and seeing who’s played most on the radio,” she recalls. “I just went down a data rabbit hole… my jaw was to the floor. I was just looking and I had to keep refreshing, going ‘this couldn’t be it’. It couldn’t be what I’m looking at.” She was seeing “zero female artists” played on some radio stations, “year in, year out”. When her eventual report into 2019 and 2020 Irish radio play was published, it “just blew up”.

“A lot of the female artists felt validated. Especially women that had flown abroad to pursue careers outside of Ireland… they suddenly had this viable, tangible thing in this report where they were saying: This is why we had to leave,” says Coogan-Byrne. Soon the report was gathering international attention. “But with that, there was a lot of naivety,” she says. “Because I was thinking… once people have this data, they’re all going to change. It did not happen that way.

Why Not Her? by Linda Coogan-Byrne

“By the second year, in the UK I’d had conversations with the BBC and with other major radio sector companies and outfits, and they were just fantastic. They’d listen to you, and they’d go through the data and have all these important conversations, and then they’d put me through to their diversity department teams. But in Ireland, it was tumbleweed.”

While the reports were widely shared and supported, she says she also received some negative feedback from people in the industry. Comments such as, ‘We don’t have the budget,’ ‘It’s the record label’s fault’ and, shockingly, ‘men make better music than women’.

By 2021, Coogan-Byrne had a team of people involved with Why Not Her? and its reports. Now, she says, she will be taking a step back from the reports in a personal capacity.

“I’ve left it to the team to decide whether they want to continue,” she says. “That’s what this book is about – the necessity of other people continuing on and carrying the baton, if you will. I’m not going to continue doing reports in Ireland when there’s absolutely no reaction, no change, no onus from the government or from people in leadership in the broadcasting sector, to want to change.”

But, there has been some policy change regarding gender balance on air. In 2022, the Online Safety and Media Regulations Act allowed media regulator Coimisiún na Meán to create codes to promote balanced gender representation of participants in news and current affairs programmes. Like with music radio play, the gender balance in this area was also dire, as shown by the 2015 National Women’s Council of Ireland report Hearing Women’s Voices? Last year, the commission published the first Gender, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy for the Irish audio and audiovisual sector.

“It’s great to have policies in place, but unless people actually put their action into the policies, the policies just remain policies,” says Coogan-Byrne.

CMAT is one of many talented Irish female artists

Many international female artists are played on the radio, but a particular block seems to be with Irish female artists, says Coogan-Byrne. This is despite the fact that the country is home to many talented women, like CMAT, Jazzy, and Muireann Bradley. Over the past few years, groups like FairPlé and MiseFósta have also been set up to raise awareness of issues around gender balance across different genres of music.

Why hasn’t change happened to the degree she hoped it would?

“We do scratch our heads in the team here, because I don’t know why Irish radio doesn’t make the change, or why it doesn’t feel it’s even important,” says a clearly baffled Coogan-Byrne. Over 3 million people listen to the radio every weekday, meaning what’s played on air can have an impact on people being exposed to new music. This raises the question of who isn’t getting heard on Irish radio, and what that means for both listeners and artists.

“There’s devastating effects on so many levels to female creatives, where they’re getting this message that they don’t matter, what they have to say isn’t important. If they can’t see it, they can’t be it. I hate using clichés and that, but it’s true,” says Coogan-Byrne. “So it’s a detrimental cultural, societal damage that it’s doing to female creatives and not only that, but on an economic level as well.”

She believes that the men who are heavily playlisted on Irish radio, while “brilliant”, are “given opportunities that women just are not given”, and don’t receive the same kind of criticism female artists do. Why is this, does she think?

“I think it stems from a vast ecosystem, on a societal level, on a cultural level… I’m sure any woman that has existed will have been told this whole thing like ‘little children should be seen and not heard’, but it’s usually young girls that should be seen and not heard. Boys are listened to.”

The conversation within her book about misogyny feels all the more urgent at a time when there is a lot of discussion around the impact of online toxic masculinity on young men - particularly how this is explored in the Netflix show Adolescence. “My God, we need to see more male allies that call [sexism] out. But we’re living in a time of Andrew Tate and Elon Musk,” says Coogan-Byrne.

Jazzy playing support to Becky Hill at Musgrave Park, Cork. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

While the book outlines how people can start to challenge this sort of culture, it also contains a ‘reality check’ section. “It isn’t a walk in the park, speaking up and demanding change. It’s a very difficult thing to do, and it’s a very difficult thing to continue doing,” says Coogan-Byrne.

She describes the book as a roadmap for people. “I’m just a normal person. I’m just someone who’s seeing, okay, this is possible. I can actually get in touch with my local TD, or I can get in touch with the Taoiseach, or I can write a letter to the President.” 

The book contains many depressing statistics, like the fact that 71.1% of top 10 singles over the past two decades were released by Irish male artists and bands. Yet Coogan-Byrne finds hope in the change that has taken place.

“There’s an urgency and a necessity for things to change in Ireland. Because what the reports in the UK have shown us is that change is completely possible,” she says, noting that women overtook men for the first time in airplay in the UK last year. “If they can do that and turn it around in a short period of time, Ireland is completely capable of doing it.”

She plans to send the new Arts and Culture Minister, Patrick O’Donovan, a copy of the book.

Her aim with the book is “to cause some sort of a conversation”, says Coogan-Byrne, though maintains “conversations are empty without action”.

“People-powered campaigns are huge. They have been through all of history. If we get enough people having the conversations, it can’t be ignored. That’s the hope that I have,” she says.

• Why Not Her? A Manifesto for Culture Change is published on April 11. Coogan-Byrne has curated a playlist to accompany the release spotlighting female artists. Listen on Spotify.