2024 Oscars Have The Most Women Nominees, With 32 Percent

Despite notable omissions in the directing category, the 2024 Oscars boast a record-high percentage of female nominees.

This year, mirroring the statistics from 2021, 32 per cent of the nominees across the 19 feature races are women. Excluding the three short film categories and international feature films, which do not list individuals, this percentage ties with the highest recorded in history.

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The 2021 Academy Awards, held in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, marked a pinnacle of diversity among nominees, with 20 per cent representing underrepresented racial or ethnic groups and 11 per cent comprising women of colour. In comparison, this year’s nominees include 20 per cent from historically marginalized racial or ethnic backgrounds (ranking third overall, after 21 per cent in 2019), with 5.7 per cent being women of colour.

These insights come from the Oscars edition of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s Inclusion List, launched last year with backing from the Adobe Foundation. Updated with data from the upcoming Academy Awards, set to take place this Sunday, the website provides comprehensive statistics on all-time nominees and winners by gender and race, including information on individuals with multiple nominations.

The analysis reveals that 40 per cent of male nominees and white nominees have received more than one Oscar nomination, compared to 30 per cent of female nominees and 25 per cent of nonwhite nominees. Only 14 per cent of women of colour with an Oscar nomination have received multiple nominations. Composer John Williams holds the record for the most nominations among white men (54 and counting), while the late costume designer Edith Head boasts the highest number of nominations among white women (35).

Among individuals from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups, a diverse trio of men – filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, cinematographer James Wong Howe, and actor-producer Denzel Washington – each share the record with 10 nominations. The most career nominations for a woman of colour stands at four, achieved by several women including costume designer Ruth E. Carter, actor Viola Davis, sound editor Ai-Ling Lee and filmmaker Chloé Zhao.

The Inclusion List also delves into the impact of #OscarsSoWhite, noting a rise in the percentage of nonwhite nominees from 9.5 per cent to 17.1 per cent in the nine years following the hashtag’s emergence in 2015. However, across the 96-year history of the Academy Awards, women constitute 17 per cent of all feature nominees, individuals from historically marginalized racial or ethnic groups make up 6 per cent and women of colour represent fewer than 2 per cent.

Stacy L. Smith, the founder of AI2, stressed the importance of recognizing that while there has been progress, the percentage of women and people of colour nominated for awards in feature categories remains significantly below proportional representation. “There is much more work to do to see the creative talents of women and people of colour – and particularly women of colour – recognized by this industry body,” Smith emphasized in a statement.