This Sunday’s 60th Grammy Awards were marked by dazzling performances, stunning red carpet looks…and a serious underrepresentation of female artists.
Despite the prominence of support for the #MeToo movement on the red carpet and onstage, these Grammys were hardly reflective of the rising tide of female empowerment in the entertainment industry. Only 17 out of 86 awards given out went to women or female-led bands. This isn’t a new problem by any means – according to the New York Times, only 9% of all 899 Grammy nominees in the last 6 years were women. This year, Lorde was the only female artist to be nominated for Album of the Year – but unlike her fellow nominees, she was not invited to perform.
Backstage, Recording Academy President Neil Portnow addressed the tension regarding this lack of female representation: “I think it has to begin with women who have the creativity in their hearts and their souls who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, who want to be producers, who want to be part of the industry on an executive level to step up,” he said.
“I don’t have personal experience of those kinds of brick walls that you face…[but]…there’s so many opportunities today. So if someone’s passionate about it, doesn’t matter what your gender, genre, geography — do it yourself, take it from your heart and put it out there.”
Understandably, people weren’t happy. Celebrities took to Twitter to denounce Portnow’s statement and defend the caliber of female music this year despite a lack of recognition.
“WOMEN IN MUSIC don’t need to ‘step up.'” Pink wrote in a letter she tweeted, “Women have been stepping up since the beginning of time. Stepping up, and also stepping aside. Women OWNED music this year. They’ve been KILLING IT. And every year before this. When we celebrate and honor the talent and accomplishments of women, and how much women STEP UP every year, against all odds, we show the next generation of women and girls and boys and men what it means to be equal, and what it looks like to be fair.”
Information obtained from:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/arts/music/grammy-awards-metoo.html
Images obtained from:
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2018/01/29/grammy-awards-bos…
https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/grammys-2018-stars-react-t…