4. Having Only One Woman Win Best Director In Its Entire History
On a more serious note, it's absolutely staggering that in the Academy's near ninety-year history, only once has a woman director been named the best in her field, an peculiarity that occurred in 2009 when Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director for The Hurt Locker (which also won Best Picture, hence the two Oscars in her hand in the picture above). That's one woman out of the 69 directors (or directing teams) who have won the award. What's more, only four women have ever even been nominated for Best Director, starting with Lina Wertmellur in 1976 (for her Italian film, Seven Beauties), and getting to Bigelow by way of Jane Campion (The Piano, 1993), and, a decade later, Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, 2003). By the Academy's reckoning, in the near-entire history of cinema a woman has only directed a film worthy of being called the Best once, and has only been considered for that title four times, which, without beating around the bush, is pretty shameful. Of course, that doesn't mean that this notion (of women not being worthy directors) is even remotely true, but it does mean that the Academy is still hopelessly retrogressive in its beliefs, not to mention terribly passe as an organization.
