BOSTON — A Harvard University theater group with an all-male cast is under fire from those who say it should allow women onstage – and they’re asking Mila Kunis to take up their cause.

Detractors are calling on the Hasty Pudding troupe to start casting women and to update sexist portrayals of women. Amid the debate, some are calling on Kunis to reconsider her acceptance of the group’s Woman of the Year award on Thursday to protest the exclusion.

Mila Kunis is be honored Jan. 25 the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year award. She's being asked to decline. Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

“It would be a wonderful thing for her to not accept this award, to say this is gender inequality,” said Liz Kantor, a senior studying molecular and cellular biology, who auditioned for this year’s show. “There are women on campus who are more than willing to take advantage of these opportunities, yet they’re still being excluded.”

Hasty Pudding is known for bawdy comedic revues that feature men in drag playing female characters, a longstanding tradition in the group, which says it was formed in 1795.

But more recently, women have sought acting roles in the student-written parodies, which are shown in Massachusetts, New York and Bermuda and have helped launch careers for former students ranging from Jack Lemmon to Broadway composer Larry O’Keefe.

Kantor is among about 20 women who auditioned for this year’s show as a form of protest, an idea started by two women in 2015. Each year, the women have promptly been cut.

Women can take behind-the-scenes jobs, including writing the shows or working on the business staff or technical crew, the group says on its website.

Students on Hasty Pudding’s executive board, which is led by a woman and includes several female members, declined to comment.

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