At the 94th Academy Awards, 10 of the 43 awards were won by women. Individual Oscar statuettes were given out Sunday night. This is the worst showing of female winners since the 2018 Academy Awards.
That’s 23% of the overall individual winners across the Oscars’ 23 competitive categories, bolstered by wins for Best Director Jane Campion, as well as others for Sian Heder for Best Adapted Screenplay and Billie Eilish for Best Original Song. This tally, however, does not include the International Feature category, which is awarded to the film’s country of origin — in this case, Japan for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car.”
That total was a drop from last year when we saw Chloé Zhao win Best Director for “Nomadland,”This was the second time that a woman has done so. Emerald Fennell also won Best Original Screenplay. “Promising Young Woman.”Women won 17 of 47 awards in 2021, an all-time record at the Oscars for women.
Of the 229 individual nominees from 2022’s crop of nominated films, counted 65 were women (or 28.3%). This was also a decrease from last year’s record 76 individual nominees (32.3%), and also a decrease from 2020 when 65 individual nominees were women (31.1%).
Fortunately, the two frontrunners in this year’s Oscars Best Picture race were each directed by women: “The Power of the Dog”Campion and “CODA”Heder, with “CODA”Campion won Best Picture. Campion was also the third woman to win Best Director after Kathryn Bigelow, Zhao and it solidifies her status as the only woman ever nominated.
Ariana DeBose became the first openly lesbian and Afro-Latina woman in history to win an acting award, Billie Eilish was the first person born in 21st century to win an Oscar and Jenny Beavan was awarded her second Oscar. “Cruella”She has received 11 nominations in her career for Best Costume Design.
However, “The Power of the Dog”Ari Wegner was director of photography. She is only the second woman to win the Oscar for Best Cinematography. “Encanto” composer Germaine Franco win Best Original Score, which would’ve made her the first Latina to do so.
These are the female winners, other than DeBose or Chastain.
- Jane Campion – Best Director – “The Power of the Dog”
- Linda Downs and Stephanie Ingram (with Justin Raleigh) – Makeup and Hairstyling – “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”
- Zsuzsanna Sipos (with Patrice Vermette) – Production Design (and Set Decoration) – “Dune”
- Jenny Beaven – Costume Design -“Cruella”
- Sian Heder – Best Adapted Screenplay – “CODA”
- Billie Eilish (with Finneas) – Best Original Song – “No Time to Die”
- Yvett Marino (with Jared Bush, Byron Howard and Clark Spencer) – Best Animated Feature – “Encanto”