On Saturday, 5,500 students attended Springfest, USC's annual music and arts festival. This year's lineup, which featured hip-hop acts Trippie Redd and Troy Boi, did not include any female artists.
In the past three years, Springfest has featured only one female artist, Paige Duddy, a member of the brother-sister alternative-pop duo XYLØ. Some students were disappointed that women were absent from the lineup.
"Each day a new artist was released, I was expecting at least one to be female," said Leah Wolchin, a communications major.
Sophie Barnard, a freshman studying French horn performance said she also noticed a lack of diversity in the genres of the artists who performed.
"It would have been nice to have some variety because they were all kind of similar artists as well. And having a female voice would have added something different," Barnard said.
In popular music, men outnumber women 3.6:1, according to a study published in February by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Additionally, only 10 percent of Grammy winners in the past six years were female, the study found.
"Similar to the representation in all media, I think in order for something to be normalized we must be exposed to it, and the lack of female artists has an underlying message of carelessness," Wolchin said. "Whether or not this was intentional, the message is still there."
As a female musician, Barnard said that she is used to seeing women underrepresented in music.
"Not only in popular music, but in classical music, it kind of exists everywhere and we don't realize, but it's easier for male musicians to be successful a lot of the time," Barnard said.
Kira Stiers, the executive director of the Concerts Committee, who organized the concert, defended the all-male lineup and said the committee had tried to book female artists but was unsuccessful.
"Unfortunately there are so many factors that go into booking that go into booking including radius clauses, price range of an act, availability, willingness to play a college show," Stiers said. "There tend to be more men doing large, live music acts than women and so when we add in all those factors, women become harder to book."
Sydney Nebens and Dakota Gryffin also contributed to the reporting of this article.