The Recording Academy president Neil Portnow has said women need to “step up” if they wish to win Grammy Awards.

Alessia Cara, who took home the Best New Artist award, was the only woman to win an award during the main telecast.

Portnow, speaking to Variety, referencing the lack of more female winners, said women who want to be a part of the industry need to step up. He said:

It has to begin with women who have the creativity in their hearts and souls, who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, producers, and want to be part of the industry on the executive level.

[They need] to step up because I think they would be welcome. I don’t have personal experience of those kinds of brick walls that you face but I think it’s upon us — us as an industry — to make the welcome mat very obvious, breeding opportunities for all people who want to be creative and paying it forward and creating that next generation of artists.