The Oscars have gendered acting awards but not in other categories, so I looked at 9,530 individual nominations since 1929 to discover to what degree men dominate the personal awards.
This is interesting, but surely your dataset provides a skewed picture? It's no surprise that the film industry has been male-dominated if you go back to the 1920s.
Surely the more instructive graph would show if things have improved significantly in recent years, in response to pressures for more gender equality. My guess would be that it has... but by far less than you might expect.
The big omission for me has always been as Oscar for casting, which is finally coming for 2025. Casting directors are and have always been overwhelmingly female, and so this is almost certain to go to a woman most years. Script supervisors are mostly female too but it's hard to imagine an Oscar for best continuity.
You’ll find a similar pattern in billion dollar start ups, engineering, hard sciences (e.g AI), tech (e.g software), large scale architecture, and aviation. Some fields have biases and some don’t, e.g chess has zero barrier to entry. It sits in the corner of your grandparents’ house, begging to be played; 98% of chess grandmasters are male. Conversely, there is a list of low barrier to entry fields women dominate;
• Education
• Nursing & Healthcare Support
• Psychology & Therapy
• Human Resources
• Public Relations & Communications
• Interior Design
• Social Work
• Publishing & Editorial Work
Perhaps or perhaps not off topic, it’d be interesting to use statistics to uncover why males are drawn to high risk, high competition and abstraction whereas women are drawn to relationships, communication and structured environments. Until then, it seems we’re focused on surface level matters.
Gender-neutral awards are completely ridiculous, if they continue with it then the whole Awards season is pointless. Women deserve to be nominated for roles in which they depict serious women making achievements and sacrifices in history, industry and defining womanhood.
Otherwise, these shows will only exist to look at women in pretty and weird dresses and the films that get nominated will get worse and worse each year. I'd like to see the awards season suspended until the year the movie industry releases enough epics that are worthy of awards. Emilia Perez, a movie that is critically slated, a box office flop and slated all over social media, especially by native Mexican people, receives 13 NOMINATIONS? Just 1 less than the mighty classic Ben Hur???
Stephen, here's a great idea for an article. Could you look at the state of Female comedy movies from the year 2000 to present day? I would love to know the Top 5 women's comedies of each year and what it said about female humour and producers & studio execs's understanding of teenage girls and young women audiences.
Movies like 13 Going On 30, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Monte Carlo, Sweet Home Alabama, Coyote Ugly, Bridesmaids, Freaky Friday, 27 Dresses, How To Lose A Guy In 30 Days,etc.
What was the change in these movies and how they slowed down and stopped being made? What were the changes in fashion, slang, social behaviours, attitudes to the opposite sex, romance?
I was going to reach out to you to ask why producers are not in this. Even though the entire cast and present crew flood the stage while the producers accept the award, if you go to the academy's website, you can find out who the producers were who were given a statue. (At least back to 1951). I think it is safe to assume that before those are all men since the producer would be the studio and I don't believe there were any female studio heads before 1951. But echoing other comments, it would be interesting to see from 1975 since that is when women started pushing for their place in the upper management positions. This feels important since women tend to be more aware of placing others who are marginalized into the roles that get nominated for awards as well.
This is interesting, but surely your dataset provides a skewed picture? It's no surprise that the film industry has been male-dominated if you go back to the 1920s.
Surely the more instructive graph would show if things have improved significantly in recent years, in response to pressures for more gender equality. My guess would be that it has... but by far less than you might expect.
That's a great point, Guy. I've add a time series to the article based on your suggestion. Thanks for that!
This is why you're the film data king!! can't believe the "change" over time... absolutely mad
The big omission for me has always been as Oscar for casting, which is finally coming for 2025. Casting directors are and have always been overwhelmingly female, and so this is almost certain to go to a woman most years. Script supervisors are mostly female too but it's hard to imagine an Oscar for best continuity.
You’ll find a similar pattern in billion dollar start ups, engineering, hard sciences (e.g AI), tech (e.g software), large scale architecture, and aviation. Some fields have biases and some don’t, e.g chess has zero barrier to entry. It sits in the corner of your grandparents’ house, begging to be played; 98% of chess grandmasters are male. Conversely, there is a list of low barrier to entry fields women dominate;
• Education
• Nursing & Healthcare Support
• Psychology & Therapy
• Human Resources
• Public Relations & Communications
• Interior Design
• Social Work
• Publishing & Editorial Work
Perhaps or perhaps not off topic, it’d be interesting to use statistics to uncover why males are drawn to high risk, high competition and abstraction whereas women are drawn to relationships, communication and structured environments. Until then, it seems we’re focused on surface level matters.
Gender-neutral awards are completely ridiculous, if they continue with it then the whole Awards season is pointless. Women deserve to be nominated for roles in which they depict serious women making achievements and sacrifices in history, industry and defining womanhood.
Otherwise, these shows will only exist to look at women in pretty and weird dresses and the films that get nominated will get worse and worse each year. I'd like to see the awards season suspended until the year the movie industry releases enough epics that are worthy of awards. Emilia Perez, a movie that is critically slated, a box office flop and slated all over social media, especially by native Mexican people, receives 13 NOMINATIONS? Just 1 less than the mighty classic Ben Hur???
Stephen, here's a great idea for an article. Could you look at the state of Female comedy movies from the year 2000 to present day? I would love to know the Top 5 women's comedies of each year and what it said about female humour and producers & studio execs's understanding of teenage girls and young women audiences.
Movies like 13 Going On 30, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Monte Carlo, Sweet Home Alabama, Coyote Ugly, Bridesmaids, Freaky Friday, 27 Dresses, How To Lose A Guy In 30 Days,etc.
What was the change in these movies and how they slowed down and stopped being made? What were the changes in fashion, slang, social behaviours, attitudes to the opposite sex, romance?
I was going to reach out to you to ask why producers are not in this. Even though the entire cast and present crew flood the stage while the producers accept the award, if you go to the academy's website, you can find out who the producers were who were given a statue. (At least back to 1951). I think it is safe to assume that before those are all men since the producer would be the studio and I don't believe there were any female studio heads before 1951. But echoing other comments, it would be interesting to see from 1975 since that is when women started pushing for their place in the upper management positions. This feels important since women tend to be more aware of placing others who are marginalized into the roles that get nominated for awards as well.