“Not a single woman nominated"
The 2022 Lux Style Awards has been criticised after no women had been nominated for its music awards.
The event initially faced backlash when it was announced that it would be going ahead.
This came after the Hum Style Awards was criticised for hosting an extravagant event at a time when Pakistan was battling the worst climate catastrophe in recent history.
It has now emerged that out of the 82 musicians nominated in the four music categories, not a single one of them is a woman.
The four music categories are Song of the Year, Singer of the Year, Most Streamed Song of the Year and Best Live Performance of the Year.
This has led to Pakistani women musicians speaking out against the Lux Style Awards for snubbing female singers.
Meesha Shafi called out Lux Style Awards and said in her Instagram Story:
“Not a single woman nominated in the LSA music nominations.
“Erasure at this scale (there is an exceptionally high number of nominations this time) of the entire female population occupying the Pakistani music industry is unjustifiable and highly problematic.”
Zeb Bangash shared Meesha’s post and stated that awards and nominations in the Pakistani music industry have not always been a measure of an artist’s calibre.
She added: “To completely ignore women on a platform fueled by a woman-centric brand that has always been run by women is surprising and gives cause for concern.
“I’m wondering why NO woman artist made the cut this year?”
In a lengthy post, Momina Mustehsan said: “LSA holds value and respect of Pakistanis for being the longest-running event extending nods to the arts and artists, despite Lux not being an arts/music/film/entertainment entity but rather a multinational company’s soap brand’s marketing event – which is a separate conversation altogether.”
She went on to say that it might have been an unintentional oversight from Unilever and Lux to “exclude an entire gender when setting out to acknowledge an entire industry – omitting female contributors even from the 80+ music works they did nominate in haphazard distribution – and that is exactly what the problem is when we take responsibility for extending nods on behalf of people, we owe it to be intentional, responsible, inclusive and fair to all”.
She continued: “By completely ignoring every female contributor in music, we are depriving 110 million women of the representation and inspiration they truly deserve to see and be.
“Coming from a female-centric company like Unilever, Pakistan that has made commendable efforts towards Gender Equality within their company by having strong female presence across their workforce and especially at executive positions – it doesn’t sit right.”
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