Wave of wins may signal tide has turned
Female artists take home Grammys in major categories, many for 1st time
When the 2024 Grammy nominees were first announced, women dominated the major categories. And at the recent ceremony, those nominations translated into awards: Every televised competitive Grammy went to at least one woman.
Several women earned their first Grammys, including Miley Cyrus, best new artist Victoria Monét, country artist Lainey Wilson and Karol G — also the first woman to win in best música urbana, a moment that may reflect changing perceptions of reggaetón and Latin hip-hop as exclusively “men’s music.”
“You know, I feel a lot of responsibility about that. As a woman, I have to say, like in my experience, it was tough, like so many things, to be a girl in this industry, in the music that I do, in urban music,” the “Mañana Será Bonito” artist said backstage, adding she also reflected “women in the world fighting to represent” themselves.
Paramore became the first rock band fronted by a woman to win best rock album. And Taylor Swift, of course, not only made history by becoming the first artist to win album of the year four times, but she also is still the only woman to win more than twice.
“First of all, I think it is just wonderful to see so many women at the top,” Dua Lipa said before she opened the show with a fiery pop medley.
“What we want is just an equal space in the industry and to be seen equally on equal levels — not just on the creative side but on the business side — so hopefully the equality in the industry will kind of level things out a little,” she added. “I think we’re still kind of figuring that part out. But we’re getting there, slowly.”
The evidence points to what Lipa is referencing: Only 19.5% of all songwriters across the Billboard Hot 100 songs in 2023 were women, according to analysis from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Women still make up a fraction of producers and engineers.
But at the Grammys, where much of the focus is on performers, it appeared like women were ruling the industry.
Phoebe Bridgers of boy genius won her first Grammys, taking home more than any other performer with four.
In the week leading up to the Grammys, Bridgers said there was some significance to the band’s recognition because “it was only a couple of years ago now that that (expletive) who is now being accused of sexual violence said women need to step it up if they want to be nominated.”
She was referring to former Recording Academy President Neil Portnow, who, in 2018, said women need “to step up” if they wanted to receive Grammys and then issued an apology. He stepped down in 2019. In November, Portnow was sued by a woman who said he had drugged and raped her in 2018, an allegation his representative has called false.
The Recording Academy has made considerable changes to its programming in the post-Portnow years, attempting to better reflect the current musical climate. Recently, more than 2,400 music creators joined the voting bloc — of those new additions, 50% are people of color, 46% are under the age of 40, and 37% are women.
In January, Recording Academy CEO and President Harvey Mason Jr. theorized the number of women nominated was “a direct result of a lot of the changes that we’ve been making at the academy.”
The question then becomes: Was this year a fluke? The result of an all-star year of women who couldn’t be ignored? A correction? Symbolic of some systemic shift? Or something else entirely?
The only real televised criticism came from Jay-Z, the lone man awarded solo on the telecast (Finneas also won a televised Grammy, alongside his sister, Billie Eilish). Jay-Z’s acceptance speech for the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award began by shouting out the rap legends that came before him — the ones who worked to bring hip-hop to the preeminent music award show, only to have rap categories not make the official broadcast.
“We want you all to get it right,” Jay Z said in his speech. “At least get it close to right.”
Then he switched focus to Beyoncé, who last year became the most decorated artist in Grammy history, with 32 trophies. “Most Grammys, never won album of the year. How does that work?” he said of his wife. “Even by your own metrics it doesn’t work.”
Emily Lordi, a Vanderbilt University professor whose focus is African American literature and Black popular music, says there is value in examining the intersections of race and feminism at the Grammys.
This year, two women — SZA, for her critically acclaimed and groundbreaking “SOS,” and Janelle Monáe, for her innovate treatise on sensuality and freedom “The Age of Pleasure,” were up for album of the year. If one of them had taken it home, the winner would have become the first Black woman to do so since Lauryn Hill, who won with “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” in 1999.
Lordi says that record “suggests a residual and highly flawed view of Black women’s music as ‘niche,’ ” despite the fact that “Black women have foundationally influenced every genre of American music, so that Billie Eilish’s vocal style is a direct descendant of Billie Holiday’s aesthetic, just as Miley is made possible by Tina Turner, and Taylor by Tracy Chapman.”
Monáe, who has 10 career nominations, did not win a Grammy — and never has. SZA, who led nominations with nine, took home three awards — but was shut out of the general field categories.
There’s much to celebrate about the 2024 Grammys, including its focus on female performers — something that wouldn’t have seemed possible as recently as 2011, when the Grammys still had gender-specific awards.
But, Lordi notes, “as we champion the representation of women, we also need to keep thinking intersectionally and critically about which women are being honored and for what?”
The first pill for postpartum depression approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is now available, but experts worry that minority and lowincome women, who are disproportionately affected by the condition, won’t have easy access to the new medication.
About 1 in 8 women experience symptoms of postpartum depression, federal data shows. Suicide and drug overdoses are among the leading causes of pregnancy-related death, defined as death during pregnancy, labor or within the first year of childbirth. Black, Indigenous, Hispanic and low-income women are more likely to be affected.
Most antidepressants take six to eight weeks to take full effect. The new drug zuranolone, which patients take daily for two weeks, acts much faster. But the medication, manufactured jointly by Biogen and Sage Therapeutics under the brand name Zurzuvae, comes with a price tag of nearly $16,000 for the two-week course.
Postpartum depression can be treated with a combination of therapy and antidepressants. But Zurzuvae is only the second medication, and the first pill, that the FDA has approved specifically for the condition.
The first approved drug, brexanolone, also made by Sage Therapeutics, sold under the brand name Zulresso, costs $34,000 before insurance and requires a 60-hour hospital stay for an IV treatment. Doctors typically must get approval from patients’ health plans before prescribing it, and hospitals must be certified to administer it.
Experts and advocates are urging state Medicaid agencies to make sure the low-income patients who are covered under the program are able to access Zurzuvae. They want Medicaid-managed care plans and private insurers to waive any prior authorization requirements and other restrictions, such as “fail-first” approaches that require patients to try other drugs first.
Zurzuvae only recently became available by prescription. Several state Medicaid agencies contacted by Stateline said they haven’t yet adopted a policy and will handle prescriptions on a case-by-case basis. Others said they automatically add FDA-approved drugs to their preferred drug lists, although some require prior authorization.
Medicaid covers about 41% of births nationwide and more than two-thirds of Black and Indigenous births, according to health policy research group KFF.
As of December, only 17 insurers in at least 14 states — less than 1% of the nation’s 1,000 private insurance companies — had published coverage guidelines for Zurzuvae, according to an analysis by the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health. Five of the 17 companies said they will require patients to try a different medication first. Three will mandate that psychiatrists prescribe Zurzuvae, though OB-GYNs can and do treat perinatal and postpartum depression, per the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
While most states offer Medicaid coverage for a full year postpartum, many psychiatrists don’t accept Medicaid — or any other insurance claims — due to low reimbursement rates.
In a statement to Stateline, a spokesperson for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said Sage Therapeutics participates in the federal Medicaid drug rebate program, but individual state Medicaid agencies will determine their own coverage policies.
Dr. Leena Mittall, a psychiatrist and chief of the Division of Women’s Mental Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, advocates for a “no wrong door” approach to the new treatment.
“I’m really hopeful that there will not be excessive restrictions in terms of especially burdensome authorization processes or availability,” she said. “If somebody’s seeking treatment or help, that we have multiple points of entry into care.”
In New Mexico, more than a third of residents are covered by Medicaid, the highest percentage in the nation, according to 2021 figures analyzed by KFF. New Mexico Medicaid said it automatically adds drugs approved by the FDA to its preferred drug list, meaning Zurzuvae is covered.
A spokesperson for the Medicaid agency in Louisiana, which has the nation’s second-highest proportion of Medicaid recipients at 32%, said it also will cover the drug.
“We recognize that Black and Brown women are reported to be disproportionally impacted by (postpartum depression). In addition, those who live in rural areas and those who have Medicaid may be more likely to receive inadequate postpartum care, compared to those who live in urban areas,” Biogen spokesperson Allison Murphy wrote in a statement.
In a 2022 report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention detailed causes of maternal deaths between 2017 and 2019, finding that pregnant women and newly postpartum mothers were more likely to die from mental health-related issues, including suicides and drug overdoses, than any other cause. In total, mental health conditions were responsible for 23% of more than 1,000 maternal deaths, the study found.
The report also found that about 31% of maternal deaths among Indigenous women were due to mental health conditions. Black women, whose national maternal death rate is three times higher than white women’s, are twice as likely as white moms to suffer from a maternal mental health condition but half as likely to get treatment, according to the Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance.
Similarly, a review published in 2021 in The American Journal of Maternal/ Child Nursing found a higher prevalence of postpartum depression among American Indian and Alaska Native women.
Previous analyses also have shown disparities in postpartum depression prevalence and its risk factors among Latina women.
Sage Therapeutics and Biogen tapped Kay Matthews, founder of Houston-based Shades of Blue, a national Black maternal mental health advocacy and support group, to help craft culturally sensitive advertising campaigns.
Matthews, who struggled with postpartum depression after giving birth to her stillborn daughter, said she was glad to see financial assistance programs offered but hopes they will continue beyond the rollout. Matthews said more pharmaceutical companies should focus on developing postpartum mental health drugs.
“We know that all drugs don’t work the same for everybody, right? There’s no one-size-fits-all approach,” she said. “The more we uplift these things in a way, then we start to really reach towards equitable care within a system that we know wasn’t designed to care for us, but we have the ability to change that.”