Oscars 2013: Everything You Need to Know About Sexism In the Academy

Culture

The nominees for Best Director are once again all men. In 85 years, only four women have been nominated for Best Director and only one (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker) has won. What's up with that?

This video makes that fact even more unbelievable.  

This video says everything you need to know about sexism in the Academy because these are just the kind of inspirational, off-beat films whose directors win the Oscar for Best Director every year.

Critiques like this one attracts a lot of criticism of its own, but before you prepare to say that the lack of female "Best Directors" is just coincidence, really think about the fact that in 85 years, only one woman has won Best Director and only four have even been in the running. That's a long time, and those are really low numbers.

Even I have written a blog post about the implications of criticizing film awards organizations for not nominating enough women, specifically regarding there only being two women on the Writer's Guild nominee list this year.

As an unapologetic feminist, I really didn't find it alarming that there were only two women — last year there were four. In 2011, there were two on the list and in 2010 there was one. At least women maintained a presence in the Writer's Guild nominations. It's not celebratory, but it's not completely ridiculous either. Repeatedly having none, now THAT would be ridiculous.

Only having four women nominees in 85 years for Best Director in the Oscars is unacceptable and misleading.