Girls. The fairer sex eh? Multi-taskers are they? Well to be fair of them, they’ve done bloody well for themselves in a heavily male-dominated industry and have shown that they can do dance music just as well as the guys can. And why the hell not! But have we really reached total gender equality in terms of male and female DJs yet? As Frantic & Nu Religion team up for Timeless Romance on February 10th at The Colosseum, with a Valentine’s themed Boys Arena and a Girls Arena, we ask: is there still a glass ceiling for women in dance music?

Unfortunately there are still some people who want to make a distinction between male and female DJs for all the wrong reasons. The Shejay Top 100 Women DJs Poll, although good-natured, certainly didn’t help in the quest for equality. If the concern was that not enough female DJs were showing up in the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs Poll (the industry standard), then surely creating a separate contest for women only is like saying that they can’t stand up against male competition? Not helping the cause one bit if you ask me. Matthew Duffield of Sedition DJs recognises that there are still people working in dance music who refuse to see female DJs as equals to male DJs. “Just as there is in most aspects of life unfortunately, there is still prejudice. Dance music is no different in that respect but a lot better than other fields that's for sure.”

For most the part though, the “are male and female DJs any different?” argument seems to have been put to bed. The Gallery’s house resident Tania von Pear highlights the current strength of women in dance music. “Although there was a frightening lack of females in the last Top 100, there are more fantastic women on the scene now then ever before. Each genre has outstanding talent from techno’s Mistress Barbara to minimal’s Tania Vulcano to house’s Sarah Main and of course Radio 1’s two Annie’s!” How to explain the DJ Mag Top 100 situation then? Obviously the poll isn’t an indication on the true popularity of DJs, and more an open-to-abuse vote for readers of the magazine, but as the most high-profile poll of sorts, its results can have somewhat of a knock-on effect.

One possibility is cultural differences across the globe – with the majority of votes coming from Holland and the US, you’ve got to ask whether DJ gender equality is the same the world over. “That’s a hard one” says Tania. “I was the first girl DJ in India and they certainly were amazed that a girl would be doing it as I had a massive amount of interest from the mainstream press like The Times and Asian Age. I’ve seen girls coming through from other countries like DJ Lucca from Czech Republic but I know she has a UK manager so it’s difficult to say.” Slinky and Tidy starlet Kym Ayres, who is playing at Timeless Romance, says her experiences as a woman in the industry has only made a superficial difference. “I think I get asked out by more men than if I was a bloke, but I think the whole “female DJs get treated differently to male DJs” thing is a thing of the past now. It's not so uncommon to be a bird and be able to mix”

The rise of the internet has probably helped to diminish the strength some of the traditional gender-based identities that have been assigned to the ancient art of DJing. The often snobby, trainspotterish ambience of the independent record shop has now been largely replaced by the more “democratic” process of online MP3 shopping. No longer just a hobby obsessively pursued by geeks and purists, it’s now something that is readily available to people all over the world. .

Looking at different scenes in dance music, it becomes apparent that some are more male-dominated than others. At one end of the scale – hard dance, with large number of female DJs, with many being the biggest names in the scene. At the other end – drum ‘n’ bass, with hardly any well-known female jocks springing to mind apart from Storm. Maybe the ratios will change more in years to come, but why does the situation differ so vastly? If you look at the history of these two scenes, you can get an idea. Hard dance evolved from the tough house and proto-trance sounds at the legendary gay club Trade – a place where women could go and be free from the lecherous advances of blokes, as they would endure in straight clubs. The drum ‘n’ bass scene experienced frequent bouts of violence as it grew in the mid ‘90s, perpetuating an über-macho atmosphere that didn’t appeal to many girls. Of course things have changed over the years for DnB, but this is still the likely explanation.

On a wider scale, the historic dominance of male DJs in the industry could well be a by-product of the inherent structure of the dance music game. The first major clubs in the UK and around the world were owned and managed by men, and likewise with record labels (with several notable exceptions – Sugarhill and Def Mix for example) – so it’s a trend that goes way back. And why does this trend exist in the first place? Well if I go down that road we’ll be here all day...

The world of production certainly doesn’t seem to be as equal in gender terms as the DJ world does quite yet. Again, the technical/geek aspect of production something that is traditionally prescribed as being a “boy” thing, but in this day and age of the female technophile it’s still surprising. It will be interesting to see how this situation progresses, and how long it is before world-famous female producers are a regularity rather than an occasional occurrence. I say, let’s put this discussion to bed here and now – scrap the Shejay Top 100 – and let the only difference between male and female DJs be a physical one. Mind you, it would probably help people to forget about this topic of discussion if that Niki Belucci would put her tits away!

"This vinyl is 12"? I know I used to be a pornstar but..."