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Lack of female nominees sparks #JunosSoMale debate on Twitter

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[Grimes (real name Claire Boucher) on stage at the Budweiser Made in America Festival on Aug. 31, 2014, in Philadelphia. Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for American Eagle]

Just weeks ago, the Oscars took major flak for the lack of inclusion of people of colour among this year’s acting nominees. The result was a debate about diversity and racism in the entertainment business, along with calls from stars like Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith to boycott the show.

Now the Juno Awards is under fire for what some say is a lack of women up for major music prizes.

After the nominees for Canada’s equivalent of the Grammys were announced on Tuesday, Grimes, who has spent the few last years rising to become one of Canada’s biggest indie musicians, took to her Twitter account to vent.

Her irritation stemmed from no female nominees in categories like Album of the Year, Recording Engineer of the Year or Artist of the Year. There are also no women up for awards like Rock Album of the Year, Rap Recording of the Year or Dance Recording of the Year.

“I don’t expect recognition, but I believe there were qualified women besides myself for many categories,” she tweeted on Tuesday night, according to major Canadian music news website Exclaim!.

“I can’t help but feel that if women were equally rewarded for technical work they would feel inclined to participate more,” she continued, and went on to name a few women she said could have been up for Recording Engineer of the Year.

Grimes later deleted her tweets, telling Exclaim! she wasn’t “blasting anyone, just discussing an issue,” and she had deleted her comments to “avoid inflammatory press like this.”

Stars singer Amy Millan also wasn’t pleased, and began calling out the nominations right when they were announced, creating the hashtag #JunosSoMale.

“All the dudes congratulating the dudes,” she also tweeted.

This year’s nominations are dominated by the likes of The Weeknd, Justin Bieber, Drake and Shawn Mendes.

Female artists did receive some nominations. For example, Buffy Sainte-Marie is up for three awards, including Songwriter of the Year and Aboriginal Album of the Year. Rising star Alessia Cara received four nods, two of which include the Breakthrough Artist of the Year category and the Junos Fan Choice Award.

But it’s the lack of female presence among marquee categories like Album and Artist of the Year that’s rankled some, which led to Millan’s hashtag picking up steam on Twitter. People used it to voice their irritation at the nominees — and the hashtag’s very existence:

Others just thought the entire debate was pointless for other, more tongue-in-cheek reasons:

The Juno Awards have long faced criticism for what some say is an overreliance on sales as a determining factor in who gets nominated. But this is actually a long prevailing misconception of the process.

The reality is most of the nominees are now either entirely determined by votes from judges picked by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS), the group responsible for the Junos, or by a mixture of sales, judges and online streaming data. There are only nine categories, including the Juno Fan Choice Award, that still have any sales components.

Album of the Year is still an entirely sales-based category. Nominees for Recording Engineer of the Year are determined by votes, while Artist of the Year nods are picked by a mix of votes, sales and streaming data. CARAS judges consist of people like artists, record labels, managers, stores, radio hosts and agents.

"We’re obviously in a time right now where you have some incredible male performers who’ve had a breakout year,” CARAS president and CEO Allan Reid says.

Reid points out that in previous years, artists like Feist and Kiesza won multiple awards. Looking further back, he recalls musicians such as Alanis Morissette and Céline Dion, who dominated the Juno Awards in the ‘90s.

“This story took away from the credit of some of the women who did get nominated,” Reid said.

He adds that a third of the nominees this year are either female, female-fronted bands, or acts that include women in some way. He also says 32 per cent of the submissions the Juno Awards received this year were from female artists.

“Social media sometimes takes on a life of its own based on no fact, and that’s what’s so disappointing,” Reid says.

“We got pulled into this conversation because we’re obviously a large focal point for the music industry. The comment is more about whether there’s gender equality in the music business, and that’s not for the Junos to comment on.”