There's been little improvement of the representation of female filmmakers in the Academy Awards since 2000

Men are represented seven times more than women in the nominations of filmmaking roles at the Academy Awards since 2000. According to data found from the Oscars archive, there's been a total of 54 female nominees in the categories of directing, editing and screenwriting versus 417 nominations for their male counterparts. 

This year offered the most female representation in the nominations with at least one nominee in all four categories. Furthermore, this year's awards saw its first ever female cinematographer nominee, Mudbound's Rachel Morrison, as well as a total of eight female producers as nominees. But even if this was the best year for female filmmakers across all categories, there were still over three times more male nominees. More so, none of these women won. 




On average, women have a 15 per cent chance of winning after being nominated in one of these four categories. Over the 17 years of data collected only seven had female award winners, most between the years of 2003-2007. Films from 2003 saw the most winners with a total of three. Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, along with male co-writer Peter Jackson won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The other winner was Sofia Coppola when Lost in Translation won Best Original Screenplay. Coppola was also nominated for Best Director for Lost in Translation, making her at the time the third woman to ever be up for the title of best director. To date, there have been only five women to ever be nominated in the best director category, three of those being since 2000, making it the most underrepresented category for women in this study by far. 


Kathryn Bigelow made history as the first (and only) woman to take home the Oscar for Best Director for the 2009 film The Hurt Locker. There was then an eight-year gap before the Director category saw another female nominee in Greta Gerwig for her semi-autobiographical film Lady Bird. Gerwig lost to Guillermo Del Toro and his film The Shape of Water. 

The category of best director has fewer nominees in general compared to the other three, which does not answer for such a deep underrepresentation but explains it a little bit. Generally, there is only one director per film and therefore per nomination. In the categories of screenwriting and editing, there is more potential for groups of people to be nominated, meaning more individuals per nominations. These teams aren't necessarily all-female or all-male, making the inclusion, in general, less polarizing. 

The question that arises from this study is why aren't female filmmakers being nominated? Are they not making Oscar-worthy films? Or, are there just not enough women filling these roles? 

In a study conducted by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, researcher Dr. Martha M. Lauzen looked at the employment of women behind-the-scenes in the top 100, 250, and 500 films from 2017. In the top 250 top-grossing films, women made up 11 per cent of all directors, 11 per cent of writers and 16 per cent of editors. Female directors saw an improvement of 4 per cent from the prior year, while the other two categories declined. 

With these numbers in mind, it shows that the underrepresentation on female nominees in the Academy Awards isn't due to the lack of recognition of female filmmakers. More so, these numbers present the severe lack of women occupying these roles in general.