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15th January 2020
03:32pm GMT

Categories like Best Actress and Best Actor have existed since the Oscars' very beginnings.
The first ever Academy Awards took place in 1929 and saw Janet Gaynor and Emil Jannings take home the respective awards for two or three performances each - because that's just the way they did things back then.
To add an additional Best Female Director award would potentially undermine the undeniable contribution female directors have paid the industry since the birth of cinema, instead giving them a second rate consolidation prize that would automatically not hold as much weight as its male counterpart.
And yet, at the same time, to remove the gendered categories that the Academy still boasts now would risk eliminating many more women from ever being nominated at all.
After all, there's every chance that five men could receive the nod for Best Actor - but five women? Not in this lifetime.
And while the Oscars is not the be-all and end-all of cinema, it is always - without fail - the most talked about awards ceremony of the year. It does hold weight, even if we'd rather it didn't.
The awards are also unlikely to change in any real way in the next few years.
We can remain hopeful that more women (and more specifically, more women of colour) are recognised for their work and their talents, but we are not guaranteed in any way that that will happen.
Still though, it'd be a nice surprise if it did.Explore more on these topics:

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