Oscar Has a Gender Problem
Article by Denise Papas Meechan
Developmentally Edited by Alexandra Hidalgo
Copy Edited and Posted by Megan Elias
The Academy Awards airs this Sunday February 9 at 8pm. About this time of the year, interest and anticipation builds to a fever pitch leading up to the Oscars telecast, when hundreds of millions of movie lovers tune in to watch the glamorous ceremony and find out who will receive the highest American honors in filmmaking. This year, giveherabreak.org will air the event with no ads. Instead, during that commercial break, they will play trailers of woman-directed films.
The organization is streaming the awards in this fashion in order to bring attention to the fact that, this year, once again, no women have been nominated for Best Director. This, despite the fact that in 2019, more than 10 percent of top films were directed by women— the highest number in more than a decade.
Captain Marvel was one of 2019’s top grossing films
A study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California found that of 113 directors attached to the year’s top 100 films, 12 were women, compared with just five in 2018[1]. The top-grossing films featuring female directors in 2019 included “Captain Marvel,” “Frozen II,” “Hustlers,” “Abominable,” “Little,” “Little Women,” and “Queen & Slim.”
The award for best director is the most prestigious and is open to all genders. It is also one of the most damning examples of gender bias in the film industry. Since the first award ceremony in 1929, there have been 449 nominations for best director. Just five of these went to women. One of those five, Kathryn Bigelow, is the only one to win the award, when she was victorious in 2010 for The Hurt Locker.
A new report by the Women’s Media Center found that only 30% of all non-acting Oscar nominations went to women this year – and that is up from 25% the year before[2]. Of the 186 total nominees in those categories, 56 are women, 130 are men.
“The number of nominations for women increased in the 92nd Academy Awards, but not by much,” according to a Women’s Media Center analysis of the Oscars’ 19 non-acting categories, ahead of Sunday’s 92nd Academy Awards. “The overall percentage of female nominees in those categories rose by just 5 percentage points, from 25 percent last year to 30 percent this year, compared to 70 percent for male nominees[3].” Although an increase of 5% in one year may seem like a significant step in the right direction, it is premature to herald 2019 as a turning point. Dr. Martha Lauzen of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University has studied women’s employment and representation in film and television since 1998. She has determined that there is what she calls a “gender inertia,” in Hollywood[4]. The numbers are up a little one year, then two steps down the next, with no evidence that any progress whatsoever has been made over the period of time she’s been keeping track.
This year’s report found little progress for women in non-acting Oscar nominations, and that 30% remains a long way from gender parity.
Still from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
The number of nominations of women went up in the categories of Best Picture (producing), Film Editing, Animated Feature, Makeup and Hairstyling, Original Score, and Documentary Short. They stayed the same or dropped from the previous year in the other 13 categories, including Best Director, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay and Cinematography.
It wasn’t until after 1950 that the Oscar for Best Picture went to the producer(s) of the film rather than a studio. Since then, women have only been nominated 13 times from the 379 total nominations, of whom none have gone on to win an Oscar. Of the nine films nominated for Best Picture this year, eight had at least one female producer. That’s up from last year, when only four out of eight did.
Women are underrepresented in all other ungendered categories as well. There have been 23 music categories over the years, today including categories such as best song and best score. Female-only representation accounts for just 1.6% of the 1,238 nominees[5].
The starkest imbalance comes in the cinematography category. This was the last ungendered category to nominate a woman — and the only one that has done so just once (out of 609 times. That’s just 0.16%). The woman nominated was Rachel Morrison for Mudbound and that was just two years ago, in 2018.
Change has to start from the ground up – more female directors. Period. And they need to be given similar budgets and similar access to time, to equipment, and marketing.
Most of the best pictures nominees are huge productions with male protagonists leading a cast where the vast majority of the important characters were white men like, such as 1917, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, and Joker. It’s hard for anyone to compete without access to the same assets those films receive.
A still from Queen & Slim
Also, Oscar voters need to see all types of films before they vote to nominate a film. More voters should watch independent movies, allowing them a chance to get on the nominations list. Many women and minority directors create films in this tier of moviemaking and, despite their lower budgets, make incredibly compelling films that deserve to be considered. For instance, this year, directors like Alma Ha’rel for Honey Boy, Melina Matsoukas for Queen & Slim, and Mati Diop for Atlantics were snubbed by the Academy. Matsoukas has claimed that three screenings were held for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to see her film and almost no members attended. A film cannot be nominated if it is not seen.
While a gender imbalance in Hollywood still exists, the percentage of women nominated when accounting for acting categories, whether on their own or as part of a team, has certainly improved — at least for now. At this year’s ceremony, for example, women or mixed teams have been named for 44% of the total nominations, the highest proportion in the history of the Oscars. That’s double the number in 1930, when all this began.
But when it comes to the most prestigious categories that both men and women can win — best directing, best picture and adapted and original screenplay — there is still much work to be done.
To learn more about Denise, visit her profile.
[1] Smith, Stacy L. “New Study: Inclusion in the Director’s Chair?” The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. January 2020. return
[2] “WMC Investigation 2020: Gender and Non-Acting Oscar Nominations- full report.” Women’s Media Center. 6 February 2020. return
[3] “WMC Investigation 2020: Gender and Non-Acting Oscar Nominations- full report.” Women’s Media Center. 6 February 2020. return
[4]Lauzen, Martha. “Gender Inertia in Hollywood”. 30 January 2014. return
[5]Levitt, Daniel, Catherine Shoard, and Seán Clarke. “Oscars: the 92 year gender gap.” The Guardian, 6 February 2020. return