Women not represented

DAVID FRIEND

THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO Alysha Brilla wasn’t surprised by the lack of female representation when this year’s Juno Awards nominees were announced.

Years ago, the Waterloo, Ont.based musician and producer decided to conduct an experiment. She carefully tabulated the gender diversity among Juno nominees and found there wasn’t much at all, particularly in the technical categories, which were completely dominated by men.

After scrolling through this year’s list of contenders she concluded little has changed.

“I don’t want to see women take over the industry. I want to see a balance,” says Brilla, a two-time Juno nominee for best adult contemporary album.

“(But) there’s a lot of resistance,” she adds, “mainly from folks who don’t think there’s a problem in the first place.”

Brilla points to data that shows only four women have won the producer award in the 45 years that Junos have been handed out; the engineer prize has never gone to a woman.

Among this year’s nominees selected by CARAS members in categories that aren’t based on sales, the figures show a stark disparity.

Album categories including country, adult alternative, francophone, classical, contemporary Christian, rap, R&B/soul and reggae all only have one female nominee each. Both the engineer and producer of the year categories don’t have a single female nominee.

When Brilla raised the issue with Junos brass in the past the response she got shocked her.

Representatives said better diversity at the Junos would only happen if more women became members of theCanadianAcademyofRecording Arts & Sciences (CARAS).

“The woman on the phone said to me, ‘We don’t have a lot of female voters so if you could find us some, that would be great,’ ” Brilla remembers.

“So I went out and did the work. I solicited every woman I knew who was technically qualified — who works in the industry. I asked artist friends, asked production friends and brought back a couple to them.”

She waited until the next year to see if her efforts made a difference in the list of Juno nominees. They didn’t, she says.

“A lot of people in the industry would say that everything is fine. You work hard and get where you want to be,” Brilla says.

“To some extent that’s true ... but I’m a very rare example of a woman in the industry who has the platform to voice these feelings. Why aren’t things shifting?”