Despite Two Years Of Gains, Women Got Just 25% Of Behind-The-Scenes Oscar Noms This Year

There will be no Oscars this year for female directors, cinematographers, film editors, composers or visual effects artists. Of the 41 nominees in the five categories announced today for the 91st Academy Awards, none is a woman. And only two of the 20 screenwriting nominees are women – one of 12 for Adapted Screenplay and one for eight for Original Screenplay.

Altogether, of the 211 individuals who received behind-the-scenes Oscar nominations this morning, 53 are females (25%). Those numbers actually are up from 23% last year and from 20% in 2017 – a 25% increase from two years ago, according to date from the Women’s Media Center.

In this year’s Best Picture race, five of the 25 nominated producers are females, but only one of the 17 producers nominated for Best Animated Feature Film is a woman.

“Women in Film celebrates all of the women whose remarkable work in front of and behind the camera has been acknowledged by the Academy,” the organization said in a statement to Deadline. “However, today’s Oscar nominations also reiterate that we still have real work to do to achieve parity for women across the screen industries – particularly for female directors, whose extraordinary work this year has notably been all but forgotten by Awards acknowledgement.”

Women, however, will walk away with an Academy Award for Documentary Feature, Costume Design and Makeup and Hairstyling. Nine of the 14 producers nominated for Docu Feature are females, and all five nominated films have at least one female producer. All five Costume nominees are females, and five of eight nominees for Hair and Makeup are women, with at least one in each of the three nominated films.

Four of 16 nominees for Original Song are female. Half of the 10 nominated production designers are females, and four of the five nominated films had at least one female production designer. Women were two of the 17 nominees for Sound Mixing and three of 10 for Sound Editing.

In the short subjects, women comprised were five out of 10 nominees for Live Action Short; five of nine for Animated Short; and two of nine or Documentary Short.