Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Charterhouse Productions and Convenor of the National Women’s Summit and Expo, Theresa Oparebea Ayoade, has hinted at the possible return of the music reality show, Stars of the Future.

As the first musical competitive reality show in Ghana, organized by Charterhouse Productions, the programme lived up to expectations by discovering talents such as Irene Logan, Efya, and Kaakie in its subsequent editions.

After the 2011 edition, the show went dormant, and Ghanaians did not hear anything about it again, leaving many talents without the opportunity to showcase their abilities.

However, speaking in an interview on Joy Prime’s Changes show, Mrs. Ayoade hinted at the possible return of the show, but this time with a focus on women only, aiming to help elevate their talents, as the music industry may not have treated female artistes as fairly as their male counterparts.

As a women’s empowerment advocate and a prominent member of the production house, she believes there is a need to promote and encourage female artistes, as the industry’s structures appear to disadvantage them.

“We’ve actually been thinking about coming back with the Stars of The Future for women because we need to see more female musicians coming out. The structure of the industry may not be too kind to them that’s why we may see women struggling to breakthrough.”

Her response comes amid concerns raised by some female musicians about their struggles in the industry and how Charterhouse is helping to project women through its awards scheme, the Telecel Ghana Music Awards.

She further noted that, in light of this, the company has established a foundation known as the Charterhouse Africa Creative Foundation to identify and address pressing issues in the industry.

However, she does not blame Charterhouse for not putting more women in the spotlight, explaining that their awards scheme is largely a reflection of what is happening in the industry.

“I think that the scheme is probably a reflection of what pertains in the industry. So I feel that if we have to fix it, we would have to fix the challenge in the industry. To address that, we have set up a foundation called the Charterhouse Africa Creative Foundation and in that foundation, we’ve come up with initiatives that address some of the gaps that we see in the creative industry at large because having being in the industry for over 25 years, we’ve worked with practically all sectors and we see where the gaps are. So the foundation was setup to come up with initiatives to partner with sound like-minded institutions to address some of these gaps and one of them that we’ve addressed is the women in the creative arts. We’ve come up with some initiatives that can bring them together more as a collective and see how we can be more deliberate and intentional about promoting them.”

Mrs. Ayoade noted that the award scheme is doing its best to provide support, but it cannot do much if there are not as many entries from female artistes as there are from males, which she believes is a huge imbalance that must be addressed.