Two more award shows became gender-neutral last week, fueling more speculation about the day when major award shows – think the Academy Awards, Emmys, and Golden Globes (yes) – might follow suit and drop the distinction between “actor” and “actress”. In all of them there are competitions.
The organizers behind the Spirit Awards and the Canadian Screen Awards follow the examples set by Recording Academy, MTV, and the Gotham Film & Media Institute. The announcements for The Independent on August 23 and the Canadian Academy on August 25 follow a July decision by British Independent Film Awards backers to cancel gender categories in this year’s competition.
I’ve been writing about this trend for several years, including my 2019 column “It’s Emmy Time to Remove Gender Specific Representation Categories,” which got the most attention of anything I wrote that year. She followed it up with a piece in 2020 (“The Emmys and Other Awards Should Eliminate Gender Divides, Here’s How To Do It”), which suggested ways to do it.
The idea of non-gender award shows began to emerge when the MTV Movie and TV Awards dropped gender-specific categories in 2017, but Grammy Awards organizers got rid of gender categories even earlier, removing female pop voice performance and male pop. Differences in vocal performance from over a decade ago. The TV Critics Assn. He has always received an Individual Achievement Award in Comedy and Drama.
Last year, the Gotham Awards switched to a gender-free approach after eight years of handing out separate awards for the actor and actress.
“It’s something we’ve been discussing for a while,” says Josh Welch, head of The Independent, on soul transformation. “There was a lot of enthusiasm for that for a while, but there were also some concerns about it. It’s a big change, and I think we really wanted to talk about it carefully and make sure it was the right thing to do.”
It is noted that the majority of awards are gender-neutral. “Just to keep it at the Spirit Awards, for nearly 40 years we have honored writers, directors, producers, editors, and cinematographers without reference to gender,” he says.
Switch is more suitable for a non-binary representation community. In 2017, “Billions” star Asia Kate Dillon, the first non-binary actress to play a non-binary character on a major TV show, asked the Television Academy to clarify gender differences. Eventually, Dillon requested to enter the “supporting actor” category at the Emmys; They later asked the SAG Awards to drop the gender awards.
“There are a lot of great artists out there, and I think we’re going to see more who don’t know them as male or female,” Welch says. “For award shows to be in a position to tell one of these actors, ‘If you get nominated, you have to choose male or female’ — that’s not good style.”
The consolidation of acting fields raises the question of how many performers will be honored: The Spirit Awards have expanded the nomination field among performers to 10 (up from five for both the actor and actress), adding a supporting performer category in television — meaning there is a will in still at least many honored.
Moving forward, there are potential unintended consequences — including a gender imbalance. But Welch says The Independent will monitor such issues. “This is a real and legitimate concern,” he says. “But I feel the issue isn’t award shows; the issue is the industry. It’s not a level playing field in film and television for female creators. It’s the decisions that are made throughout the year.”
He points out that Independent voters are far from being homogenous and trans-female and have a high percentage of people of color and those identifying as LGBTQ. “If there’s an awards body that has a strong and diverse voting body that can handle this approach to voting, I think it’s Film Independent.”
[Photo: Taylour Paige won this year’s Spirit female lead award in film for her performance in “Zola.”]
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