Celebrities Are Calling Out the Recording Academy President After He Said Women Need to ‘Step Up’

After the Grammy Awards’ lack of female winners and Lorde not being invited to perform solo despite nabbing an Album of the Year nomination, many expected an explanation from Recording Academy president Neil Portnow. He did respond, but Portnow’s answer ended up doing more harm than good.

Variety reportedly asked Portnow about the underrepresentation of women in this year’s show, and what follows was his answer: 

“It has to begin with… women who have the creativity in their hearts and souls, who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, producers, and want to be part of the industry on the executive level… [They need] to step up because I think they would be welcome. I don’t have personal experience of those kinds of brick walls that you face but I think it’s upon us — us as an industry — to make the welcome mat very obvious, breeding opportunities for all people who want to be creative and paying it forward and creating that next generation of artists.”

The response — particularly the notion that women need to “step up” — didn’t go over well with artists. “Women in music don’t need to ‘step up’. Women have been stepping up since the beginning of time,” Pink wrote in a penned response.

Portnow responded to the backlash in a statement to Variety on Tuesday.

“Sunday night, I was asked a question about the lack of female artist representation in certain categories of this year’s Grammy Awards,” he said. “Regrettably, I used two words, ‘step up,’ that, when taken out of context, do not convey my beliefs and the point I was trying to make.”

Portnow continued, “Our industry must recognize that women who dream of careers in music face barriers that men have never faced. We must actively work to eliminate these barriers and encourage women to live their dreams and express their passion and creativity through music. We must welcome, mentor, and empower them. Our community will be richer for it. I regret that I wasn’t as articulate as I should have been in conveying this thought. I remain committed to doing everything I can to make our music community a better, safer, and more representative place for everyone.”

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