Women win one third of awards in history making year at Golden Globes
The 78th Annual Golden Globes Awards took place virtually Sunday February 28th, and made history with the first time an Asian American Woman took home the award for Best Director. Chloe Zhao won for her film “Nomadland” alongside two other women nominees, Regina King for One Night in Miami and Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman — the most women to ever be nominated for Best Director. Zhao is the second woman to be named Best Director by the Golden Globes, only following Barbara Stresiand for her film “Yentyl” almost forty years ago.
Nerys Muller, A senior film student at Hofstra says, “I think it’s so inspiring to watch women ascend to their deserving nominations. Specifically at the Golden Globes, seeing that Chloe Zhao, Emerald Fennell, and Regina King were nominated for the Best Director award was so amazing, although I find it to have come later than it should have. Each of them are brilliant-minded individuals with so great directing prowess and cadence. Even though I am glad they are getting recognized now, I wish a lot of their talents had been recognized sooner.”
This comes after years of criticism of the lack of diversity acknowledged by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
“I don’t really care about the Golden Globes, it is a really narrow set of categories, and a really narrow set of people voting on the films. I don’t think it is really representative of what people in the industry are actually wanting,” says Blake Larson, recent COVID coordinator for Netflix’s Don’t Look Up.
Overall, the Golden Globes nominated a higher percentage of women than ever before with 15 women receiving nominations for their work across the 10 categories open to men and women.
Historically, no more than one woman would be nominated per category, with the majority of categories containing exclusively male nominees. To have a category containing a majority of woman nominees is a major step for the Association.
Despite the strides women made in nominations, the number of awards won was consistent with years past. Women won one award for every three awarded to a man. Zhao took home Best Director and Best Drama Motion Picture, and Diane Warren won Best Original Song for “Io Sì (Seen)” from The Life Ahead.
Does the lack of female representation at awards shows stem from something larger?
In 2020, women only filled a little over a fifth of all behind the scene roles in the year’s top films according to The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women on the Top U.S. Films of 2020. Only 18 percent of directors, 17 percent of writers and 6 percent of cinematographers were women throughout last year. While these are all improvements from previous years, This is only six percent more than the amount of women working behind the scenes twenty years ago. The majority of top films in 2020 did not employ more than four women in lead behind the scenes roles, in comparison to only the five percent of films that employed less than four men, and three out of four films had no female writers.
The TV industry has been more inclusive. A third of behind the scenes roles in the top tv shows from 2019–2020 employed women according to Boxed In 2019–20: Women On Screen and Behind the Scenes in Television. This is an increase from five years ago when women only filled a quarter of all behind the scenes roles. Streaming service shows are the most inclusive with 35 percent of roles being filled by women. Woman have won more nominations in the tv categories of the Golden Globes within the last decade by a small margin. Even with these advancements over the film industry, the majority of programs still employ five or less women compared to the 16 percent of programs that employ five or less men.
The pace of change and improvement of inclusivity and diversity within both award shows and the entertainment industry has been slow, been has started to accelerate within the last few years. The percentage of female directors has doubled since 2015 in both film and tv and over a quarter of creators and producers are female.
Many believe change needs to come from other structures for progress to continue.
Larson says, “The structure of Hollywood, the way it has been set up favors rich white dudes, and I think more needs to be done in terms of education and scholarships and training.”
Although regardless of how small, progress has been — and continues to be made.
“At this point in time, I feel that now is as good a time as any to be entering the industry with so many changes now falling into place. I am thrilled to be a part of the next generation of filmmakers especially as a woman of color. This is the time to make a change and I’ll be damned if I can’t be a part of that effort,” says Muller
