Grammys respond to complaints about lack of 2018 female award winners with big changes

The noticeable lack of 2018 female Grammy award nominees and winners has resulted in significant changes in the Grammys process.

Women in the entertainment industry are raising their voices louder than ever when it comes to dealing with sexual harassment, equal pay, and now, fair representation at awards shows. Prestigious institutions such as the Grammys are not exempt from criticism. The Recording Academy faced challenges to its Grammy award system in 2018, with critics pointing out the lack of female award winners and nominees. In response, the Recording Academy sent an announcement to its members today revealing the changes.

Grammy nominations increased

The number of nominations for Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist fields has been increased from five nominations to eight nods. In the announcement, the academy advised its members that the expansion is designed to “better reflect the large number of entries in these categories and allow voters greater flexibility when selecting this year’s best recordings.”

How significant is it that the Academy made these modifications? Billboard described the shift from five to eight nominations as “one of the most sweeping changes since the introduction of the Grammy Awards in 1959.” There’s no delay in implementation, with the changes to be in effect for the 61st Annual Grammy Awards in 2019.

Should the Academy bring back gender categories?

To achieve the goal of having more female Grammy nominees and award winners, one option that the Academy had was to restore the gender categories. Despite the uproar this year when TV viewers saw very few women win a Grammy during the broadcast portion of the award ceremony, the Academy did not bring back the gender categories for the 61st Annual Grammy Awards show.

Though changes were made for the 2019 Grammy Awards, they do not provide a method of choosing more female nominees. These other modifications include:

• Music supervisors will be viewed as nominees in the best compilation soundtrack album category.
• Restoration engineers are eligible for the best historical album category.
• For the best song written for visual media category, if a track is released in the current eligibility year (Oct. 1-Sept. 31) and the soundtrack album not released until the next eligibility year, the track is eligible for consideration for a Grammy award.
•  A nominations review committee will choose the five finalists in the world music field from the general voters’ top 15 selections.

How to get more women represented in the Grammy awards

Earlier this year, Recording Academy president/CEO Neil Portnow established an independent task force to seek ways to make the music industry more inclusive and diverse. Tina Tchen, who was chief of staff to former First Lady Michelle Obama, took on the role of chairing the task force. The Academy described the team as tasked with locating “the various barriers and unconscious biases faced by underrepresented communities throughout the music industry and, specifically, across Recording Academy operations and policies.”

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The expansion of Grammy categories just announced may stem from that task force. We hope that it results in seeing talented music industry women have their chance to take home awards at the 2019 Grammys.