Female musicians of Pakistan have taken it upon themselves to call out the Lux Style Awards for not nominating any women this year in their music category. It started off with Meesha Shafi who took to Instagram and called the organisation out while tagging other female artists. The latest to comment is Momina Mustehsan who believes systemic inequalities needs to be addressed.
Mustehsan took to her Instagram stories on Wednesday and wrote, “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.”
The ‘Beparwah’ singer added 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.”
Mustehsan went on to say that systemic inequalities that exist needs to be addressed, specifically for women in the music industry.
“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,” she wrote while demanding the Lux Style Awards do better and that they must not put Pakistani women in music on mute.
Maria Unera, Zeb Bangash, Rachel Viccaji, Natasha Noorani and Risham Faiz Bhutta also called out the awards, reposting Shafi’s Instagram story. Eva B, Rutaba Yaqub, Natasha Baig and Nimra Rafiq also reposted on their Instagram stories in a show of agreement.
It all started with Shafi who called out the jury for setting an example of women being blindsided and denied the recognition they deserve. The music nominations at Lux Style Awards have four categories — song, singer, most streamed and best live performance — and only male artists are on this year’s list.