One of Hollywood’s best-kept secrets is also one of its worst-kept: it is historically anti-women. Last year, no women were nominated for Best Director and, since the Academy Awards began in 1929, only seven female directors have been nominated. A grand total of three female directors have won the award in the almost century-long run of the Oscars.
Saltburn. Barbie. Priscilla. Last year, there was no shortage of phenomenal female-helmed films that achieved success across the board and, in recent years, the presence of Greta Gerwig, Kathryn Bigelow, Emerald Fennell and the re-emergence of Sofia Coppola cemented the staying power of females within the notoriously male-dominated world of film. But the veneer of inclusivity was shattered with the announcement of this year’s Oscar nominations, which not only snubbed Gerwig and Margot Robbie, despite their film, Barbie, making history and breaking records, but Celine Song and Greta Lee, too.
Gerwig failed to receive a nomination for Best Director, as was widely expected would be the case, but was named alongside her husband, Noah Baumbach, for Best Adapted Screenplay. Meanwhile, Robbie lost out on a Best Actress nomination, but was recognised for Best Picture as a producer under her company LuckyChap Productions, which she co-founded with her husband Tom Ackerley (LuckyChap also produced Fennell's Saltburn, which received zero nominations). Was the work of both Gerwig and Robbie only deemed worthy of recognition when bolstered by the presence of their male partners? Meanwhile, Greta Lee, whose performance in Korean-Canadian film, Past Lives, garnered universal acclaim and nominations from the Golden Globes, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the Critics Choice Awards, was snubbed in the Best Actress category, while the film’s writer, Celine Song, was overlooked in the Best Director space, despite receiving a nod for Best Screenplay. Neither Gerwig, Fennell or Song's films won any BAFTAs in this year's ceremony either.
The day after the nominations were announced, Barbie star Ryan Gosling, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, released a statement in which he expressed disappointment over Gerwig and Robbie’s snubs. Gosling said he was ‘honoured’ to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor for ‘portraying a plastic doll named Ken’. ‘But there is no Ken without Barbie, and there is no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie.’
His Barbie co-star America Ferreira echoed Gosling’s sentiments in an interview with Variety. She said that she was ‘incredibly disappointed’ that Robbie and Gerwig had failed to receive nominations in the Best Actress and Best Director categories. ‘What Margot achieved as an actress is truly unbelievable,’ she said, adding that Gerwig had done ‘just about everything that a director could do to deserve it’.
The fact that these films – or more importantly, the women behind and in front of them – were snubbed in the Oscars’ most coveted and all too long male-saturated categories is sadly unsurprising. These were films that, in different ways, spoke to the female experience. Barbie centred on feelings of otherness; Past Lives delicately explored the fragility of love and identity. Regardless of your thoughts on the Pepto-Bismol box office blockbuster of last year, it was big for business; Barbie was the highest-grossing film of 2023, taking $1.44bn (£1.14bn) worldwide. Past Lives was named as one of the 'Best American Independent Movies of the 21st Century', and praised for its modest, muted, but beguiling depiction of lost love. They were undeniably and unequivocally two of the most masterfully made films of 2023.
Tinseltown turning its nose up at the work of women is nothing new, but the tide – for a brief moment, at least– had appeared to be changing. Following an outcry in 2016 over the Academy Awards board's lack of diversity, the Academy announced plans to address this, promising to double its number of women and ethnically diverse members by 2020. It missed that deadline, but a year later in 2021, following mounting pressure, the Academy finally invited 395 new members, of which 46% were women and 39% were people of colour. According to the Los Angeles Times, 33% of the Academy's overall members now identify as women and 19% are from marginalised groups.
Progress is progress, but it’s all too minor. Of course, there are small wins this year that shouldn’t be disregarded. For the first time ever, three of the 10 films nominated for Best Picture (Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives and Barbie) this year were helmed by a woman. Lily Gladstone’s Best Actress nomination makes her the first ever woman of Native American descent to be nominated in the category. And Gerwig has now become the first director ever to have their first three (solo) directorial films be nominated for Best Picture: Lady Bird, Little Women and Barbie.
However, it would seem that the male gatekeepers of Hollywood like the money that the work of women makes them, they like the conversations that are born of female-led films, but they don't deem these works as worthy of praise as much as those masterminded by men. Women’s stories, indeed, our work, deserves to be recognised, in the same way that straight, white men’s work is – Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is the most nominated film at the Oscars this year, with a total of 13 nods.
Greta, Margot and Celine were robbed of nominations for their contribution to the film industry – three women whose work at the very least deserved acknowledgement with nominations, let alone wins. As Ferrera’s Barbie character so prophetically said in the film – one that specifically addresses issues of gender equality –: ‘Never forget that the system is rigged. So, find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful.’ If ever we needed more proof of Hollywood being a man’s world, in which women feature as merely supporting roles, this year’s Oscar nominations really are it.
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Naomi May is a freelance writer and editor with an emphasis on popular culture, lifestyle and politics. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard as its Fashion and Beauty Writer, working across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Acting News Editor at ELLE UK and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others.
