As a financially successful traveling music festival that toured Canada and the United in the summers of 1997β99 and specifically showcased women musicians and female-led bands, Lilith Fair proved that women musicians could attract audiences as much as their male counterparts.
Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan cofounded Lilith Fair because she had become frustrated with the male-dominated industry, in which the conventional wisdom was that women artists could not be as financially successful or as big of a concert draw as male musicians.
The festival also inspired later generations of female artists, including those who had attended Lilith Fair before they were famous (such as Brandi Carlile) and those who only heard about the festival decades later (such as Olivia Rodrigo).