By Jacob Sarkisian
#OscarsSoWhite was birthed in 2015 after nominations for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences failed to include any people of color in the top four acting categories.
Since then, the Academy’s nomination process each year has been met with increasing scrutiny with many observers saying its diversity problem isn’t only about race. It’s also about how the Academy has made it difficult for women to be recognized.
The Academy, made up of over 9,000 professionals working in the film industry, gives out awards every year to the best movies, performances, and behind the scenes work across the industry. Its goal, according to the organization, is to advance and “uphold excellence” within the motion picture industry.
But the Academy has done such a poor job of being inclusive while rewarding excellence that even presenters have started sounding off. After announcing the Oscar nods last year, Issa Rae said dryly, “Congratulations to those men,” referring to the omission of women in the best-directing category, despite another strong year for female filmmakers.
Read more: How the $100 billion Hollywood machine is scrambling to come back after its worst year in decades
Rae was picking up on another horror stat for the Academy: Only five women have ever been nominated for the best-director Oscar, with just one winning — Kathryn Bigelow, for “The Hurt Locker.”
Insider analyzed the Oscar nominations of the past decade and examined several top categories to see how pervasive the Academy’s diversity problem has been regarding race and gender.
What we found isn’t surprising to critics: Most often the Oscar goes to a white man.
89% of nominations in the past decade went to white people
When Insider looked at the nominations across best picture, best director, the top four acting categories, and the two writing categories (original screenplay and adapted screenplay), we found that the gap between the number of nominations given to white people compared to people of color has closed in the past four years compared to the previous six.
But Oscar nods were still overwhelmingly white. Only 6.3% of nominations went to Black creatives, while 2.6% went to Latinx people and 1.4% went to Asian people.
Another way to look at how bad the Academy is at diversity: Over the past decade, it gave 74 total nominations to people of color. In 2011 alone, it gave 72 nominations to white creatives.
Awards expert Paul Sheehan, the executive editor of Gold Derby, told Insider these statistics were unsurprising since “the kind of movies that get awards pushes are made by white filmmakers starring white actors.”
Still, 2020 marked a turning point for Asian creatives.
For the first time, there were more wins given to an underrepresented group than there were to white people. There were more wins given to Asian people than there were given to white people, thanks to Bong Joon-ho and his film “Parasite,” which won best picture.
Bong won three Oscars in the top eight categories analyzed, with a cowriter (Han Jin-won) and coproducer (Kwak Sin-ae) also picking up wins in original screenplay and best picture.
Last year was also a groundbreaking year for Māori filmmaker, Taika Waititi, who earned nominations for adapted screenplay and best picture for “Jojo Rabbit,” winning in the former category. His producer, Chelsea Winstanley, who is also Māori, was also nominated for best picture for the same film.
28.8% of the nominations in the top categories went to women
After analyzing the same top eight categories, Insider found that of 679 nominations, 71.1% went to men. It means that men racked up more than twice as many nods compared to women. Further, men won three times as often as women.
Nine of the past 10 ceremonies saw twice as many nominations go to men, with 2011 and 2015 showing the largest gaps.
The gap between nominations given to men and nominations given to women appears to be closing, but only slightly. It’s a similar story when it comes to wins.
Of course the top four acting categories — best actor, best supporting actor, best actress, and best supporting actress — are already split up by gender, meaning there will be 10 male and 10 female acting nominees every year.
But if the acting categories were genderless, as are all the other categories, would as many women have been nominated? Or would the categories be as male-leaning as the other above-the-line categories are?
If we let the data help us make the conclusion, the answer doesn’t look good for women.
Sheehan told Insider that these statistics are surprising but not shocking.
“Women are not only outnumbered in the Academy but also in the profession,” he said. “The Academy really just reflects how few women work in fields other than the traditional female ones — costume, hair and makeup, et cetera.”
Sheehan said that since the Academy is recruiting more women and people of color into its ranks, we will eventually see a change in these figures. But it will take time.
(Note that each nomination is counted rather than each person. For example, Bong is counted once for each nomination rather than just once for himself.)
There’s hope that diversity is improving
While the data paints a disturbing picture for the Academy’s inclusivity over the years, pointing out such issues appears to have led to some change.
Five of the eight total best-director nominations given to Latinx filmmakers have come in the past decade. Four of the six best-director nods given to Black filmmakers also came in the past decade (Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele, and Spike Lee), though none have won the award.
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Sheehan said he believed that this decade has improved, particularly in the past five years, because the Academy membership “got woke.”
“The mirror was held up to them and they didn’t like what they saw. They started to recalibrate what in their world was worthy of an Oscar,” Sheehan said. “‘Parasite’ is a great example where they kind of went, ‘Yeah, that is a good movie.’ Before they would’ve just relegated it to international feature.”
Another awards expert, Erik Anderson, the founder of Awards Watch, agreed. He said he believed the Academy was “getting better.”
“In four years we had ‘Moonlight,’ ‘The Shape of Water,’ ‘Green Book,’ and ‘Parasite’ as best-picture winners. Only ‘Green Book’ represents the regressive type of win that used to be common, but the other three represent a new, robust, and daring Academy,” Anderson said.
Read more: 18 female directors who have been snubbed by the Oscars
The Academy’s chief operating officer, Christine Simmons, said it’s dedicated to creating lasting change and already making meaningful strides, including inviting a more diverse collection of filmmakers to join them.
Women made up 45% of last year’s intake. Thirty-six percent of new Academy members were from underrepresented ethnic groups, and 49% were international.
“We’re trying to undo centuries of societal oppression,” Simmons added.
But the Academy’s most meaningful stride is the set of inclusion standards that a movie needs to meet to be eligible for a best-picture nomination. The rules say that a movie must meet two of four criteria — having cast members and crew from minority groups. The film must also feature story lines or themes centered on those from underrepresented groups.
Some critics lament this new standard, arguing that it could lead to a reduction in quality, while others argue that these standards could be met too easily. Time will tell if these steps lead to a substantial change.
Simmons used her previous role as leader of a women’s basketball team to make a point about how representation doesn’t just benefit the ones being represented.
“What we used to talk about a lot was that it’s not only about empowering women. It’s about also inviting men to what women can do,” she said. “Take out women and men, put in Black and white, put in gay or straight, whatever it is. It’s empowering that individual and then enlightening the others to what is outside of their experience.”
Better representation is definitely a welcome relief for movie lovers beginning to see themselves on-screen for the first time after being on the fringes of cinema, at best.
Read more: There’s a formula to winning the Oscars, and it’s all in the statistics
But, Anderson added, whether they realize it yet or not, it’s more vital for those who’ve always been able to see themselves on the big screen.
“Films show me a world that I know very little about and expand my horizons and understanding of them,” he said. “There simply isn’t a better reason to encourage and celebrate diversity in on-screen representation.”
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