The Seaside Standard WHERE ARE ALL THE WOMEN?!

GENDER-NEUTRAL FOR THE BRITS: MISTAKE OR SUCCESS?

GRACIE GOBAT

The ‘Brit Awards’ are an annual popular music award held in London, of which many would have heard, and several of us will most likely be watching. Recently, the Brit awards have introduced gender neutral award categories in order to celebrate artists ‘solely for their music’, rather than for their chosen or perceived gender identity.

Jeremy

John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Kant. What do they have in common? Besides appearing in my Philosophy textbook, all of them are men. As a student at an all-girls school, I relished the opportunity to study in an environment where gender was never a barrier to success. But when I opened my Philosophy textbook and found not a single female philosopher mentioned, I couldn’t help but question whether my experience was merely a mirage; the academic world outside of my school was still plagued by gender inequality.

Women being underrepresented in academia is not something new; female philosophers throughout history remain repeatedly uncelebrated. In ‘The Great Philosophers: From Socrates to Turing’ (edited by Frederic Raphael and Ray Monk) not a single woman’s name survived elimination. Where’s the credit for Phillipa Foot, Simone de Beauvoir, and Ayn Rand?

Historically, women have been perceived as intellectually inferior to men, and only in recent centuries have the majority of women obtained access to education which helped them to realise their potential.

Despite the progress made in recent times, women in academia continue to experience discrimination and mistreatment and the intellectual pursuit for knowledge is weighted by the consistent presence of patriarchal barriers. Anita Allen, the first African American woman president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, mentioned in her interview with The New York Times that only about seventeen percent of full-time philosophy professors are women.

If you open a philosophy history book and count how many times the author used ‘he’ or ‘his’, you will not be eating and sleeping for a few days.

Finding the missing female figures is an urgent need; Female philosophers introduce unique and diverse perspectives on the subject, ones often absent in traditional philosophical discourse. Angela Davis’ work on social justice, and Martha Nussbaum’s on ethics both made enormous contributions to philosophy while introducing a non macho-centric view to the “boys’ playground” of academia. Achieved with significant effort and struggle, their contributions deserve more credit and recognition.

An ideal solution would be to research more on neglected female philosophers and restructure the history of western philosophy; history as a discipline is subject to those who engage with it, and while valuable contributors may once have been buried for their femininity, modern philosophers with hopes for a future disentangled from the patriarchy can work to uncover them and to celebrate their work in the process. Meanwhile, as students, we can contribute by creating an environment that encourages and protects female academics: actions can be as simple as posting about these intelligent women during the upcoming Women’s History Month.

The past made our present, and the present determines our future. Including women in our history will reshape contemporary academia. More importantly, it will influence our future—women’s future. Equal representation is the only way to ensure the structural mistreatment of women and their work will not continue any further.

However, the shortlist for this year’s ceremony (taking place on February 11th) is exclusively made up of men: Central Cee, George Ezra, Harry Styles, Stormzy, and Fred Again. Excluding mixed-sex groups, 15 female artists or acts were nominated; compared to 28 male acts, the gender-based disparity is clear and frustrating. Yet it is understood that the awards’ organisers would be reluctant to return to separate male and female categories, despite the seemingly consequent selection of only men within a gender-neutral frame. A return to categories defined by gender would create a barrier for non-binary artists worthy of nomination, among them the famed Sam Smith. The gender-neutral system works well in the USA as seen through the Grammy Awards - the largest music awards ceremony in the US, which has not had a separate male and female categories for a decade and instead awards prizes such as album and song of the year.

A series of questions arises: Why does this gender-neutral system work so effectively in the USA but not in the UK? Should the Brits stick with genderneutral awards to ensure that non-binary artists are given a space to be celebrated, as well as to give artists recognition solely for their music rather than identity? Or does this simply amplify the power of the men in the music industry and drown the voices of female artists?

I think the real problem, highlighted by the disappointing lack of female representation in this year’s shortlist, is the British music industry’s inability to pay a proportional tribute to successful women within a gender-neutral system. The necessity of categorized awards to ensure female musicians receive the deserved recognition for their work arises as a consequence and not as a factor of genderbased discrimination in the UK, and reminds us that before we are able to move past gender identity as a differentiating force, we have to implement policies and behaviors which address the sexism naturally present in our society.