On Saturday night, we all watched as Harry Styles swept the board at the Brits, winning Artist of the Year, Album of the Year and Song of the Year. Fans of One Direction wept at his speech as he thanked each of his old band mates by name. Others noticed that he dedicated his Artist of the Year award to “Rina, Charli, Florence, Mabel and Becky”, referring to five female British artists who were not nominated. After the Brit awards announced that 2022 would see gender neutral categories for Best Artist and Best International Artist, the ceremony has come under much scrutiny for eradicating a platform which previously ensured female artists didn’t get overlooked. This year, all five nominees for Best Artist were male, with scarcely any women and no gender-neutral or trans people nominated in any category across the board. So why have the gendered categories been scrapped? And what implications does this have for women?
In 2021, Sam Smith was excluded from nomination in the Best Male Artist category after adopting they/ them pronouns. Many believed this was a perfect opportunity to renew the ‘out of date’ categories which separate men and women, and make the awards more inclusive to today’s notions of gender. Hugh Jackman commented on this issue, saying “I don’t know why it’s split into two genders when we all know it’s a much bigger spectrum than we’ve been thinking in the past…we should maybe break down any of those categories that end up being divisive and unnecessary”. But are gendered categories really unnecessary? In the case of Sam Smith and any other gender neutral artists, only having male and female categories is undoubtedly exclusionary and unfair. Of course, adding a whole new category for one person is not a legitimate option, but is getting rid of a mechanism which ensures the equal representation of women the only alternative? Eradicating these categories altogether seems to overlook the fact that women still do not have an equal platform in any industry, not just in music. Separate spaces for women and men are vital to preserve the protection of women. Whether they are toilets, prisons or awards categories, gender neutral spaces will never give women the platform or protection required to make sure they are not disadvantaged in any way. It is impossible to ignore the existence of gender when it is a tangible issue which affects women in every aspect of their lives.
However, looking at evidence of past winners, it is possible to argue that perhaps women aren’t at a disadvantage against men within the music industry. It seems female artists have been able to hold their own in the mixed categories. For example, in 2021, the Best Album category saw four female nominees out of five, with Dua Lipa’s album, Future Nostalgia taking the win. Moreover, Little Mix won the Best British Group award and Arlo Parks took Breakthrough Artist. Not only this, but last year, at the first ceremony without gendered categories, Adele won ‘Best Artist’, ‘Best Album’ and ‘Best Song’ and Wolf Alice won ‘Best Group’. Therefore, it might be easy to conclude that the overwhelming number of male nominees this year is because the male artists were just better. However, this is a naïve and dangerous approach to take.
Harry Styles’ speech alone is enough to prove that too many female artists this year were overlooked and underappreciated for their talent and success during 2022. It is no surprise to many of us that, yet again, the female forces within the music industry have been left unrecognised, allowing the male talents to take credit. The narrative is becoming repetitive. Not only this, but Little Mix were the first female band in history to win the Best Group award at the Brits in 2021, despite the huge success of other British girl groups like the Spice Girls, Sugababes, All Saints and Girls Aloud. In her acceptance speech, Jade Thirlwall dedicated the award to these girl groups, and highlighted the difficulty of being a woman in the U.K. pop industry. Reflecting on the history of the Brit awards, this year is not the first time they have come under scrutiny for bias and exclusion. In 1996, Kanya King founded the MOBO awards (Music of Black Origin) after criticising music awards ceremonies like the Brits for their lack of black nominees. Many are concerned that the scrapping of the Best Female Artist categories will lead to a similar discrimination against women, and a whole new female awards ceremony might need to be created. This seems to be a step backwards for women, echoing events such as the creation of The Orange prize for fiction in the 1990s, in response to the outstanding absence of female authors from Booker prize shortlists.
Overall, this year’s Brit awards seem to show that gender neutral categories, although inclusive to non-binary artists, are undoubtedly exclusionary to women. Surely there is a solution which can bring people up without pushing anyone else to the side-lines.
Mia Manttan