On March 15, 2026, the 98th Academy Awards were held. Among those nominated for Best Director was Chloé Zhao, who in 2020 was the first woman of color to ever win an award in that category. In the history of the Academy Awards, only three women have ever won Best Director, with only nine ever receiving a nomination. Before 2020, there were rarely any women in the category.
The first woman to ever be nominated for Best Director was Lina Wertmüller in 1977 at the 49th Academy Awards for her film “Seven Beauties.” The next woman in the category came 17 years later, with Jane Campion in 1994, and 10 years later, Sofia Coppola received a nomination in 2004. The first woman to win in the category was Kathryn Bigelow in 2010. Jane Campion was nominated again in 2022 and won for her film “The Power of the Dog,” making her the first woman to receive multiple nominations for Best Director.
There is no true metric to determine the ratio of female to male directors in Hollywood, as most estimates just take from the highest-grossing films and don’t take into account independent or not well-established directors, but for only nine women to be nominated out of 98 awards ceremonies, it does not seem equitable. For reference, in the history of the Academy Awards, 101 men have been nominated for Best Director, with some being nominated multiple times. In fact, out of the 13,871 total Oscar nominations across all categories, 82.2% have been men.
If we look outside of pictures backed by larger media houses and towards more independent art houses, international features and documentaries, we could begin to close that gap. Nominees for Best Director are selected based on preferences from Academy members. If audiences can shift popular viewer metrics in favor of female directors, it could have a positive impact on the Academy. When studios see that films directed by women are profitable, it gives them the confidence to back similar projects, allowing more female-directed films into the pool for the Academy to choose from.
When films gain audience traction, it becomes a conversation that Academy members can’t ignore. When independent films directed by women become surprisingly popular, it challenges the traditional definition of a “prestige” film. Especially in recent years, we have seen evidence of the Academy adapting to modern audiences.
The most visible of these adaptations comes from a social media campaign in 2015, #OscarsSoWhite, which called out the Academy for the lack of diversity in their acting nominations for that year. In 2015, every nomination in an acting category went to a white actor. In the years following this, the Academy invited thousands of new members who are younger, more diverse, and around 49% women. While these changes have still not brought about equal statistics, they represented a shift in the right direction.
While the 82.2% statistic is a disheartening reminder of how women have gone unrecognized in the arts, in the current landscape of media, audiences have the opportunity to support female directors themselves. If audiences point their viewing power towards films directed by women, studios will learn what projects to back, and the Academy will have a plethora of well-received female-directed pieces that they can’t ignore.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.