After watching the 98th Academy Awards on March 15th, I was hit with a mix of emotions over the monumental wins from the night, namely due to Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s historic win as the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for her work on Sinners. I am a female film major myself, and her win moved me to tears as I realized how inspirational she would be to other little girls who want to work in the movies too. She was the first woman and the first woman of color to receive this honor in the Oscars’ almost hundred-year history.
But, as the weeks have passed, I have realized that while I am overjoyed for Arkapaw’s well-deserved win, I also realize that I am angry. I am frustrated. I am perplexed.
Why did it take almost 100 years for a woman to win Best Cinematography? Women have been creating films since the dawn of film in the 1800s, such as Alice Guy-Blaché. Yet, women have had to fight for centuries to be properly credited. They have to work two or three times as hard for opportunities and projects, and even when they earn their roles, they are rarely compensated or awarded equally to their male counterparts.
I mean, it’s 2026, and the film industry remains heavily male-dominated. This gender disparity shows up not only in the awards circuit but also in which film industries are choosing to direct and write their projects. After doing some research, I realized that only three women have ever been nominated for Best Cinematography prior to Arkapaw’s victory: Rachel Morrison (Mudbound, 2018), Ari Wegner (The Power of the Dog, 2021), and Mandy Walker (Elvis, 2022), and all of them lost.
Similarly, I looked into another gender-neutral category for the Oscars: Best Director. I found a similar trend. Only three women have won the Oscar for Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, 2010), Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, 2021), and Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog, 2022). The first nomination occurred in 1977 with Lina Wertmüller. The Oscars began in 1929.
Shockingly, some of my favorite directors, like Greta Gerwig, have been nominated for her film Lady Bird but have never won Best Director. She was not nominated for Little Women or Barbie, to my dismay.
The Geena Davis Institute says the following about the deeper-rooted misogyny in the film industry: “Research suggests that female directors, alongside directors of color of all genders, face biases in project selection, budgeting, and distribution — limiting their potential for success even when given the opportunity to helm a film. These issues lead to a smaller pool of women in prestigious roles, or working on prestigious films, which are favored (over comedies, for example) by the academy members who vote on these matters.” And while research shows that there is an increase in films featuring a female lead character over a male, this is not reflected in the equality for behind-the-scenes roles.
It seems that in the non-acting awards (the ones that are gender neutral), the nominees are overwhelmingly male or almost always all men. Why is this the case? Women are creating beautiful films as directors, writers, cinematographers, editors, production designers, audio and sound designers, and more, yet their work constantly goes unrecognized and underappreciated simply because of their gender. Female filmmakers have constantly had to face barriers such as exclusion, discrimination, and harassment in the entertainment industry just because they are women.
The sexism in the film industry even appears in what films are favored for the awards circuit. I found out that the members who make up the voting portion for the Academy (aka the people who decide who is even nominated or wins the award) are predominantly male. The BBC dives deeper into this topic, saying that there is a preference for “male stories” due to the demographic of award-season voters. In 2012, The LA Times found that the Oscar voters were 94% white and 77% male. And a few years ago, the Academy Awards brought in 2,000 new voters after a successful awareness campaign, for a total of around 8,000 voters. But only 28% of voters remain female, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
For example, it’s crazy how The Irishman film is supposed to do better automatically during awards season compared to Little Women because of the gender of the story’s main characters, yet this has been statistically proven to be the case due to audience and industry misogyny.
Erica González Martínez, board vice chair of the Women’s Media Center, said it best. She says that while there has been some progress, “the Academy is cooperating with white, male-dominated Hollywood’s interest in using women as consumers but restricting their presence and recognition in the industry.”
Therefore, it seems like the odds are truly stacked against female filmmakers in every respect. Yet, it does not discourage the fearless women who continue to defy every odd to create beautiful, moving, and important stories. These facts should not dissuade female filmmakers from their passions but only encourage them to continue to make history and tell art worth telling.
What can we do to support female filmmakers? Support their art. Watch their movies, even if they aren’t Oscar-nominated (chances are they might become your favorite movie ever, and you will find yourself wondering how on earth it wasn’t given its flowers). Research their names, their stories, their work, and study their impact. Follow them on social media. Educate yourself and your friends, and even strangers who don’t know these facts and these barriers that exist in the entertainment industry. Supporting women in film means being an outspoken supporter of their stories because they challenge, inspire, and change the way we see the world, whether or not the Academy sees it too.