New data on inclusion at the Oscars has found that the percentage of nominees across 19 feature categories who are women and people of colour falls far below proportional representation.
The ’Inclusion List: Oscars Edition’ from researcher Stacy L. Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative is the latest update on a website launched last year to look at the gender, race/ethnicity of the nominees and winners spanning the 96-year history of the Academy Awards.
The study found that this season’s crop of nominees is at best equal to or falls behind high water marks established in previous years.
Some 32% of nominees in the 19 categories examined are women, which is the same percentage as the previous best reached in 2021. Nominees from an underrepresented racial/ethnic group accounted for 20% of nominees, which ranks third behind 2021 (24%) and 2019 (21%).
Women of colour received 5.7% of all nominations in 2024, which is below the high water mark of 11% in 2021.
“The study reveals how often the Academy Awards recognise the talent and work of women and people of colour,” said Smith. “For those who want to say that the Awards are improving, it is critical to note that in 2024, the percentage of women and people of colour nominated for awards in feature categories still falls far below proportional representation.”
Smith continued, “There is much more work to do to see the creative talents of women and people of colour – and particularly women of colour – recognised by this industry body.”
According to the study there has been little change in the overall percentage of nominees across 96 years of the Oscars. Of the 13,252 nominees since 1929, women filled 17% of all nominations, while 6% of nominees hailed from an underrepresented racial/ethnic group.
Lily Gladstone became the first Native American to receive a best actress Oscar nomination for Killers Of The Flower Moon, yet the study shows that fewer than 2% of all nominees historically have been women of colour.
Sixteen percent of winners down the years have been women, 7% were from underrepresented groups, and 2% were women of colour.
This year, the report looked at how many people received multiple nominations overall and by category and found that women were more likely than men to receive only a single nomination – 70% of women versus 60% of men were nominated once.
The same was true for nominees from underrepresented groups, as three-quarters were nominated once compared to 60% of white nominees. The largest difference was seen for women of colour, as 86% were nominated only once.
With regard to multiple nominations, the most-nominated man has 54 nods compared to 35 for the highest-nominated woman. Similarly, underrepresented nominees reached a maximum of 10 nominations, and for women of colour the high point was four.
The study also provides updates regarding changes since #OscarsSoWhite became a hashtag in 2015.
The percentage of nominees from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups has nearly doubled from 9.5% to 17.1% compared to the nine-year period prior to #OscarsSowhite. There was also “significant” improvement in the number of underrepresented nominees across 13 of the 19 categories evaluated.
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