A Music Award Went Gender Neutral. It Ended Up With All-Male Nominees.
nytimes.comOn Saturday night at a glittering ceremony in London, the pop star Harry Styles was named artist of the year at the Brit Awards, the highest honor at Britain’s equivalent of the Grammys.
After punching the air as he headed onstage, the singer then thanked his family, his mother and his former bandmates from One Direction.
But to some watching the televised ceremony in Britain, the acclaim for the pop icon was a little soured because Styles triumphed in a category that did not have a single female nominee — an unintended consequence of the decision a little more than a year earlier by the Brit Awards to merge its categories for best male and best female artist of the year into one gender-neutral top prize.
For the past few weeks, prominent figures in Britain’s music industry, and even some politicians, have been discussing the effects of that change on the visibility of female musicians here.
