Captain Marvel Confirmed To Fight Sexism In Movie

'Shocking' research finds that women represented only 4.4 per cent of the directors of the 100 biggest box office films of each year between 2002 and 2012

Charlie Cooper @charliecooper8
Sunday 12 January 2014 01:00
158 comments

Click to follow
The Independent Culture
Privileged few: Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director
Privileged few: Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director ( )
When Hollywood unveils this year's Oscar nominations on Thursday, the list of hopefuls will include some big names, some new pretenders, but shamefully few of that rarest thing in Tinseltown – a woman in charge.

Though 2013's crop of potential winners has been hailed for including several films with female producers, concerns remain that, in its upper echelons, the business is an unreformed "boy's club". Ahead of the 86th Academy Awards, recent research has highlighted shockingly few women among the directors of the highest grossing films of the past 10 years.


The fight for women's place at the top of Hollywood's hierarchy appeared to have been won when Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar, for The Hurt Locker in 2010. She was, however, only the fourth woman to be nominated for the award in the academy's history, and none has joined her on the list since.


Of the 10 films most likely to make the shortlist for Best Picture this year, six have women on the producing team – and, in the cases of American Hustle and Her, the same woman, Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty collaborator Megan Ellison.

But it is unlikely that anyone will be joining Bigelow on the desperately shortlist of nominated women directors.