A year after the Brits abolished gendered award categories, yesterday it was announced that all the nominees for “Best Artist of the Year” for 2023 are men, and so are four out of five nominees for “Best Album of the Year.” Did anyone else see that coming?
After this morning's headlines, there was a collective groan of “where were the women in the room?!” when it came to the voting. Well, as GLAMOUR's Entertainment Director, I can say, I was one. I was honoured to be invited to the Brit Awards judging panel alongside my peers in the media and the music industry. And the long list of all categories most certainly did represent some of the year's most brilliant female artists out there: Lizzo, Taylor Swift, Adele…and I voted for many such women across the many categories. (I also voted for many men too.)
No one, of course, wishes to undermine or knock the creative excellence of any artists nominated – Harry Styles, Central Cee, Fred Again, George Ezra and Stormzy are all worthy and deserving of the top gong on the night. But, surely, not at the expense of the equally brilliant women within the industry?
Genderless awards ceremonies have had a great deal of air time lately. Last week, Academy Award-winning director, Sam Mendes, said he believed it was “inevitable” that awards such as the Oscars would become gender-neutral after expressing sympathy with the actor Emma Corrin, who recently spoke about their desire for awards ceremonies to abolish gendered categories. Emma – who in 2021 revealed they identify as non-binary and now uses the pronouns they/them – told the BBC:
“I hope for a future in which that happens. I don’t think the categories are inclusive enough at the moment. It’s about everyone being able to feel acknowledged and represented.” Emma – who won Best Performance by an actress for their portrayal of Princess Diana in The Crown at 2021’s Golden Globes, before publicly identifying as non-binary – added, “It’s difficult for me at the moment trying to justify in my head being non-binary and being nominated in female categories. When it comes to categories, do we need to make it specific as to whether you’re being nominated for a female role or a male role?...I don’t think the categories are inclusive enough at the moment.”
At the British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs) last month, which I attended, they marked their 25th anniversary, by abolishing gendered categories.
And they had an interesting way of handling it, introducing a ‘Best Ensemble Performance’ along with Best Lead and Best Joint Lead performance, which went some way to opening up opportunity and awarding the whole cast as a team rather than solely focused on individuals.
Why are we talking about this, and not the fact that literal children are killing themselves because of transphobia?
But as for individual gendered categories, frankly, we’re just not at a place yet where we can abolish female categories altogether, and women being recognised and rewarded in their own lane is still necessary, nay crucial. Firstly, as this year's Brit nominations and December's BIFAs have proved, by abolishing gendered categories in the hope of equality, you rarely achieve equity.
Granted, women dominate this year's International Artist category nominations at the Brits, with Lizzo, Beyonce and Taylor Swift against Burna Boy and Kendrick Lamar. They also outnumber men in the Best New Artist category, with Mimi Webb, Rina Sawayama and rock duo Wet Leg up against Eurovision's Sam Ryder and rapper Kojey Radical. And the 2023 BRITs have the same number of female nominations as last year. But while I wholly agree with non-binary singer and winner of three Brits, Sam Smith, who has said that everybody should be celebrated “regardless of gender, race, age, ability, sexuality and class,” you can't escape the fact that the top gong of the night WILL be won by a man with no woman even being entitled to lay claim that she was in for a chance to be decreed the very BEST artist of the year.
At the BIFAs, out of the eight nominees for Best Lead Performance, only two were male: Bill Nighy for Living and Cosmo Jarvis for It Is in Us All. In the Best Supporting Performance category out of the nine nominees, only two were male: Paul Mescal for God’s Creatures and Fionn Whitehead for Emily. This is not equality and potentially leads us to positive discrimination and quotaism. How do we know that out of all lead performances in all the independent films considered, seven out of nine lead performances really were the best, and only two male performances merited nomination? Ergo, the best supporting performances?
Of course, with any award ceremony that relies on judge juries and panels, merit and reward are always subjective, albeit with a level of expert opinion. And these need to be assembled with diversity and representation in mind. But how do we also know that given this was the first time BIFA had gone genderless, in the febrile times we’re living in, they weren’t too terrified of the backlash they might face, should a man win any of these categories? In fact, it was indeed women who won all the top categories: Rosy McEwen for Best Lead Performance for Blue Jean; Kerrie Hayes for Best Supporting Performance for Blue Jean and Tamara Lawrence and Letitia Wright for Best Joint Performance for The Silent Twins.
“I have faith in our generation to show up in ways that we haven't seen before.”
And then, of course, there is the glaringly obvious fact that in both the music and film industries, we are not starting from a level playing field. Women are underrepresented, underpaid and have to work harder. Last year the results of a 10-year study into gender equality in the music industry, titled Inclusion In The Recording Studio? and funded by Spotify, found that over the past decade, female representation in music has not significantly increased.
The study examined the artists, songwriters, and producers credited on each of the 1,000 songs on Billboard‘s Hot 100 Year End Chart from 2012 to 2021. In 2021, there were 180 artists on the chart - 76.7% of them were men and 23.3% were women. Across all ten years, 78.2% of artists were men and 21.8% were women.
And it's not much better in the film industry. In fact, representation of women in the industry is declining, with Forbes recently reporting that in 2021, 12% of directors working on the 100 top-grossing films were women, down from 16% in 2020.
Representation on screen is also poor, with Forbes also recently reporting that only a third of speaking characters onscreen are currently female, major female characters are consistently younger than their male counterparts, and only 7% of films have more female than male characters. Women and Hollywood report that in 2021 only 41 of the year’s top 100 films featured a female lead or co-lead. So how can it be fair that women and men are all lumped in together?
Tissues at the ready…
I understand and support the reality that non-binary individuals such as Emma, of course, need to have a space in which their craft can be recognised and rewarded. And if we were to stick with gendered categories, where does that place all the brilliant and deserving non-binary performers?
Should there be a separate category for non-binary performers? Or perhaps, as Emma suggested, should the way in which acting awards are approached be flipped so that the roles represented onscreen inform how the category is defined? For example, actors nominated for their portrayals of female characters on screen be categorised together. That way, Emma identifying as non-binary could be included for their role as Princess Diana in The Crown, amongst other women or non-binary individuals portraying female roles on the screen within the same category. But then, where does this leave female singers?
But if there was one takeaway from attending the gender-neutral BIFAs that really hammered home how important it is for women to keep being rewarded in their own lane, it was listening to the passionate, powerful and empowering words of the legendary actor Samantha Morton who picked up the prestigious Richard Harris award for her phenomenal career and body of work.
She relayed how as a young woman trying to make a name for herself in the industry, she was labelled “difficult” and fired for refusing “to get her tits out” for a director, telling him to “F*ck off, you bastard!” And while Samantha acknowledged that we’ve thankfully seen so much change since those times, she also pointed out how far we, as women, still have to go.
The Brits are yet another reminder of that distance.
For more from Glamour UK Entertainment Director and Assistant Editor Emily Maddick follow her on Instagram @emilymaddick
