'Best

Artist' nominees are all men?

The answer to the lack of maths teachers, therefore, would be to increase their pay, which is down to the government and by extension Sunak himself. With the current teacher strikes across the UK, there would be no better time for Rishi to answer these protests and accommodate a pay rise into his plan.

Nonetheless, I doubt these protests will be heard. There seem to be deeper political undertones to Sunak’s latest statement, a development to another he made near the end of 2022. Sunak vowed to drop university degrees that would not improve students earning potential, ones that he regarded as useless. One way he would do this would be to reduce funding for the humanities, making the primary aim of attending university studying to get a well-paid job — removing all the fun. Ultimately, Sunak believes that humanities students waste government money and instead students should be persuaded into STEM while at school.

In 2021, it was recorded that there were 39,000 English teachers across state secondary schools in England, while there were only 35,771 maths teachers.

This raises concerns that Sunak is attempting to direct young impressionable students into STEM subjects is an aim to remove their political consciousness which

Sunak believes that humanities students waste government money and instead students should be persuaded into STEM can be gained through humanities courses and wider literature. would ensure that all school pupils in England would study maths in some form until the age of 18. In his speech, Rishi claimed that ‘In a world where data is everywhere and statistics underpin every job, letting our children out into the world without those skills is letting our children down.’ Unless chosen as an A-Level, most school pupils no longer study maths after the age of 16. In fact, according to Sunak just half of 16 to 19-year-olds study maths in some form, whether that be in a science course or undertaking a compulsory GCSE maths re-sit. In school, students will always complain that they are never going to need to know the circumference of a circle — that maths is pointless. However, there is no denying that maths, the sciences or computing, in comparison to humanities subjects like English or history. Graduates with the skills for investment banking could earn up to £60,000 a year meanwhile as maths teachers they would be looking at £36,000— a signi cant reduction in annual income. Alternatively, an English student looking to go into publishing may be looking at a starting salary of £22,778, which would explain the huge contrast in the number of English versus maths teachers.

This battle between two cultures, humanities and STEM is not new, it existed in the 1960s with The Snow/Leavis controversy.

A ferocious disagreement between Leavis’ attempt to keep literary intellectuals in the conversation and Snow’s desire to remove their authority and elevate that of scientists.

Nonetheless, both scholars were in mutual agreement that the education system required change.

This is the same ght that is ongoing between Sunak and the humanities departments at present.

It is the job of the humanities students, therefore, to read between the lines of these comments made by the likes of Sunak and not let his comments erase the power of their subjects.

Beatrice Learmouth Politics and Russian, Second Year

The decision to make categories at the BRIT awards gender-neutral last year was a step in the right direction for the music industry. However, this year, all the nominees for ‘Best Artist’ were men. Why with an abundance of successful women in the music industry could this possibly happen?

Last year’s decision by the BRITs to scrap gender-speci c categories was certainly a bold one. They decided to introduce gender-neutral categories in 2022 after singer Sam Smith was unable to be nominated for an award due to his identi cation as non-binary. The usual accusations and altercations circulated when the decision was made, as when any other move towards gender neutrality is taken. #TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) inevitably starts to trend on Twitter and the dreaded clip of Piers Morgan ranting about the ‘woke brigade’ emerges. The move, in my view, is absolutely a positive one, but these tiresome debates seem to ignore the real problem highlighted by this year’s nominations.

In 2022, The UK Music Diversity Report showed that the industry was dominated by women. But when it comes to more ed for the ‘Best Artist’ award and not Florence and the Machine seems a tad idiotic. A reform of the nominations process may be necessary to ensure women are still being recognised despite external factors. If two categories are being combined, why halve the number of nominees? Having 10 nominees would ensure the same number of artists are getting recognised as before.

I nd the suggestion of introducing quotas by Owen Jones to be abhorrent. It would simply make female artists feel as if they are only receiving the award due to the simple fact they are a woman. No one wants to feel as if they are receiving an award out of pity. The introduction of gender-neutral categories senior roles, the gures are far bleaker.

Only three per cent of music producers in the top 100 are women, and in 2019, only 14 per cent of writers and 20 per cent of artists signed to UK publishers were women. So what’s going on? The music industry simply still appears to be incapable of recognising female achievement and encouraging women in the industry.

This year, 13 of the 71 artists eligible for the ‘Artist of the Year’ award were women. This indicates a much wider problem which is out of the control of the BRITs organisers, but that is not to say they are entirely devoid of blame. Although there are fewer female artists, there were still many that were eligible for the award. I’m no expert in what makes a good artist but the fact that George Ezra was nominat- does arguably solve this problem.

After Serena Williams received Sports Illustrated’s ‘Sports Person of the Year’ award, she said it was the rst time she was ‘ever recognised as Sports Person of the Year’ (rather than sportswoman), which ‘really, really meant a lot.’ It’s insulting to suggest women need a whole separate category or quotas so they are able to be recognised.

Given that Adele won last year, it’s already been shown that women can be successful when pitted against men despite the discrimination they face.

This whole debate would be unnecessary if the music industry wasn’t skewed in men’s favour.

I’m not entirely optimistic, I don’t foresee a year when all nominees for ‘Best Artist’ will be women.

This whole debate would be unnecessary if the music industry wasn’t skewed in men’s favour. This year’s nominations for ‘Best Artist’ show that it is not the gender-neutral categories which need to be changed if female artists are ever to feel fully appreciated, but the systemic workings of the music industry. So thank you BRITs, for showing us just how much the feminist movement is still needed despite what seemed like progress.

Deputy Editor Digital Editor