The biggest event in the British music industry calendar is upon us once again. The Brit Awards bring together the very best and brightest names on the British pop music scene and over the years have showcased soon of weirdest and most wonderful collaborations.

This year’s ceremony seems to have a dark cloud cast over it for one simple reason: women have been woefully under represented. With the exception of the female only categories, women are hardly represented at all and that shows either a lack of effort on female artists’ part or, the more likely case, that they have been snubbed by awards organisers.

Paloma Faith has spoken out about her feeling of being left out of the running for the Album of the Year category despite “A Perfect Contradiction” being the fifth best selling album of 2014. On the subject, Faith said: "It's funny how everyone went absolutely nuts for about three years at how women are ruling the music industry and then they were like, 'We've given them three years, so let's suppress them for another 400'."

Her words may seem a bit dramatic but at a time where equality for women has been extremely prominent in the media, not just in music industry, it’s disappointing that women should be so woefully under represented.

In a way, it seems that organisers have tried to soften the blow by featuring performances from some of the most popular women of the moment including Taylor Swift and a lot of hype surrounded Madonna taking to the Brits stage for the first time in 20 years. This attempt at redemption is almost insulting; implying that female artists can’t be nominated for the awards but can get on stage and shake their behinds for our viewing pleasure.

The Brits have always prided themselves as being on the pulse of modern music and have provided many memorable moments over the years from Geri Halliwell’s iconic Union Jack Dress, to Adele gesturing her disgust at her acceptance speech being cut short by organisers. However, this year they have been let down by their lack of gender diversity and in light of such an oversight, the relevance of the whole idea of the Awards must be thrown into question.

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