The Oscars. The oldest of the four major entertainment awards, and largely considered the most prestigious of all movie awards. It’s no surprise that almost 20 million people watched the Academy Awards in 2024. If a movie or actor is nominated for an Academy Award, they immediately gain a higher status level. But after the 97th annual Oscars, it’s high time we start to question their nomination process.
The Oscars have always been surrounded by controversy, from the Oscars being accused of only picking a specific genre of movies for Best Picture, often called Oscar bait, to the 2016 boycott based on the lack of diversity accompanied by the trending hashtag “#OscarsSoWhite”.
Even through all of these events, the Oscars have failed to make a significant change in one of their most distinguished categories. Of the 257 total directors ever nominated for Best Director, only ten have been women. Of the 75 winners, only three have been women. And while they’ve responded and changed in accordance to their other criticisms, the Oscars has yet to make a significant difference surrounding this category.
The first female director in history, Alice Guy-Blaché, released her first film in 1896, 33 years before the first Oscars ceremony in 1929. The first woman to be nominated for Best Director, Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties, was in 1977. The first woman to win Best Director wasn’t until 2010 when Kathryn Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker. The other two women who won Best Directors, Chloé Zhao and Jane Campion, didn’t win until 2021 and 2022, respectively.
The Oscars have been skirting around this issue for years, claiming that the lack of diversity is the fault of “the industry” for only promoting movies directed by or starring men. But with the rise of movies like Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Anna Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour, that excuse pales. As the amount of female directors goes up, the amount of female best directors can also be expected to go up, but that’s still not the case.
While the lack of female role models is an obvious problem, the specific lack of celebrated female directors serves solely as discouragement for younger directors. Young girls who want to be in the film industry will believe that they can only be actresses and assistants because they’ve never seen a powerful woman in that field. By not giving them the opportunity to direct, they get put in boxes of what they believe they can do.
Just because female directors don’t get nominated for awards doesn’t make them bad directors. As a matter of fact, films directed by women have been more and more successful and influential. But it can be incredibly disheartening to try to succeed in an industry that’s working against you and get no credit or recognition for it.
As the 100th Oscars ceremony is approaching, we can only hope that their inclusivity and acceptance will go up, especially in the category of Best Director. Because when an organization holds that much power and influence over an industry, it’s up to them to make everyone feel welcome.
