Women are still woefully underrepresented in non-acting categories at the Oscars.
A new study finds the number of females nominated behind the scenes dropped by 2 per cent this year, despite a number of movies that featured strong women on-screen nabbing nominations, including “20th Century Women”, “La La land”, and “Arrival”. According to a report by the Women’s Media Center – co-founded by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem – only 20 per cent of the non-acting categories featured women.
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There have been no female directing nominees for the seventh year in a row. To date, only one woman, Kathryn Bigelow, has ever taken home the Best Director trophy and she’s only one of four women to ever be nominated in the category. This year, only one woman was recognized in the screenwriting category: “Hidden Figures” screenwriter Allison Schroeder.
“We have a saying: ‘If you can see it, you can be it,’ but in the crucial behind-the-scenes non-acting roles, our investigation shows that what you see is 80 per cent of all nominees are men,” says the president of the Women’s Media Center, Julie Burton. “Four out of five nominees are men — meaning male voices and perspectives are largely responsible for what we see on screen. The perspectives, experiences, and voices of more than half the population deserve an equal seat at the table.”
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One category in which women are represented is in the Best Picture category, where nine female producers are nominated. Director Ava Duvernay, who became the first-ever African-American woman to have her film nominated for Best Picture with 2014’s “Selma”, once again finds herself helming a nominated film, this time in the Best Documentary category for “13th”, her in-depth look at the history of incarceration and racial inequality in the U.S.
News of the drop in nominated women behind the scenes comes on the heels of a report by San Diego State’s Center For the Study of Women in Television and Film, which concluded that only 17 per cent of directors, producers, executive producers, writers, editors, and cinematographers working on the 250 top-grossing domestic films in 2016 were women. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences previously stated they were working towards growing diversity among their membership by adding women and minorities to their ranks, though little has changed for women who are trying to break into the industry.
