Tallinn Equality Week - Pollstar News

Tallinn Music Week founder Helen Sildna has decided that half of the speakers at this year’s conference in Estonia will be female and she believes other similar gatherings should follow suit.

She says she’s been prompted by the recent Where’s The Music? conference in Norrköping, where Swedish gender quotas make the country a forerunner for equal rights issues, and she’s keen to follow the example.

“Not only was the conference’s speaker line-up put together on the 50/50 basis but, when booking a festival programme, a Swedish promoter needs to be aware of the same principle: equal proportion of female acts on stages,” Sildna explains. She said the number of “intelligent, sophisticated, smart, witty, fun, wise, strong, extravagant, elegant and extraordinary women we are constantly surrounded by is never going to fail us in our available choices,” she said.

So far none of the female speakers have been named, although the Nordic, Baltic and entire old Eastern Bloc regions aren’t short of good female panelists. Anna Hildur Hildibrandsdóttir from Nordic Music Export would be a good choice as – 10 years ago – she was the first to introduce a female balance on panels at Iceland’s Is This It? showcase conference. Tallinn Music Week is March 25-29.