The year is 2021. I sit in the back of my Year 11 art class while Linda Nochlin’s 1971 62-page essay, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, is summarised to me like a historical text. Hearing about a time when women did not receive the same recognition for their work. How pursuing passion was a form of rebellion. All the while, I am staring out the window at a jacaranda tree.
The year is now 2025. I sit unsurprised and uninspired on the metro as The Academy announces Coralie Fargeat as the singular female nominee for Best Director for her film The Substance.
Having re-read Nochlin’s words as a newly minted 20-year-old, I now realize what my 16-year-old self did not: these words are a rallying cry, provoking the same flavour of question in every facet of the arts. 54 years on, I, along with many film critics, echo Nochlin’s question, asking as I did on the metro, why have there been no great women directors? I am not the first to ask this question; I note Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’ essay Why have there been no great women directors? published in 2014. Akin to women’s cinema, Nicholas’ essay has become buried in media dialogue and forgotten.
I’d like to begin by stating that this essay is not a comment on The Academy, nor is it intended to pose the Academy Awards as the ultimate universal yardstick for success within the industry. This is a critique on the film industry. Because, let’s face it: the arts have a problem. I note this because there are indeed awards nights which celebrate women in directing: Aswan International Women Film Festival, Athena Film Festival, Sydney Women’s International Film Festival, and Cairo International Women’s Film Festival to name a few.
But for what other awards does the world stop? We hold our breaths and listen, as A-list celebrities fight their sweaty, shaking hands to open that oh-so-coveted golden envelope. Which is why this writer believes the Academy Awards (or the Oscars) to be an apt case study on the glaringly obvious absence of our daughters of Eve in film history.
A few brief statistics about the awards;
It is in its 97th year.
In that time, there have been only 10 instances of women being nominated for Best Director.
Jane Campion makes up 2 of these nominations, and,
Only 3 women have taken the award home.
Shocked? Good. These numbers are harrowing.
In fact, humour my cynicism for a brief moment; the next time you go to the cinema or watch a movie, play a little game for me. Stay the extra minute and hold your breath during the credits, after the cast list—hold your breath until the first female name in the production team appears.
You’d be surprised how often you will turn blue.
“Well, are there even many female directors out there?”
Oh, the perfect retort.
And since you asked - San Diego State University’s annual report The Celluloid Ceiling: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes Women on Top Grossing U.S. Films’ showed that, in 2024, 16% of directors, who worked on the 250 highest grossing films of the year were women, barring international cinema.
I point now to a non-exhaustive list of the brilliant minds of Greta Gerwig, Jane Campion, Coralie Fargeat, Chloe Zhao and Sofia Coppola.
These women have rocked the world of cinema. But the fact remains, these are the exception to the rule, there are simply not enough like them given opportunities in film.
There are great female minds out there, in fact 49% of AFTRS (Australian Film Television and Radio School) are women. So where are our sisters? Where do these graduates go? – A key factor outlined by Harriet Constable in BBC’s 2019 Why aren’t there more women film directors?, is representation.
We need women supporting women to consciously fill these roles in the industry and break down barriers. We need role models.
When young girls see women telling their stories, at even a subconscious level, seeds are planted, that grow and bloom into passion. But how are women expected to lay roots and grow in an industry that systemically oppresses them and cuts them out of the narrative?
I’m now going to ask you to take out your phone and search ‘famous directors’.
I’ll wait.
Were you met by a list of 50 men? Yes?
Oh, joy.
With a quick scroll, some female names will unearth themselves. How are young girls expected to have role models in the industry when they must first, to quote Nochlin, become “archaeologists and explorers”? When even literature and cinema fail us in their depiction of women, breeding the institutionalised belief that these roles are not for us?
At this moment in history, women in film have become like vines, pushing and contorting themselves to fit through cracks that were not designed to hold them there, and as such have been afforded the treatment of weeds. Uprooted and pulled out of narratives. But as a garden bed does not simply appear overnight, we cannot expect women to miraculously start showing up in production teams and board meetings. There must be a conscious effort for equity within the arts. It begins by sowing seeds within the industry, propagating them, allowing them to flourish, embracing and caring for them in their divine femininity.
I cannot stress enough: it is not all doom and gloom. Fargeat’s nomination is a win. The Substance being nominated for 5 Oscars is a win. Barbie being nominated for 8 Oscars in 2024 was a win. These are wins, not just for women in the industry, but for women who have moulded, bent, and nearly broken themselves for a world which is systemically working against them.
The Substance was a radical film that called out societal views, treatment, and expectations of women, all while centering the female gaze. Not a gaze through rose coloured glasses, but a gaze upon gore, anger, and discomfort. Its recognition within the awards should excite us and proves that female stories are becoming valued and heard. Because women and young girls shouldn’t have to go blue to see themselves represented in the industry.