Women Make Oscar History With a Record 17 Wins

Women roared at the 93rd Academy Awards on Sunday, picking up a record 17 trophies — the most in Oscar history. With 30 male winners this year, that means women earned 36% of the statuettes handed out in the 23 competitive categories.

This year’s prizes topped last year when one third of the 39 winners were women — and 2019, when 15 of the 54 winners were women (or 27.8%). (This tally does not include the International Feature category, which is awarded to the film’s country of origin — in this case, Denmark for Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round.”

This year, the Academy nominated a record 70 women with a total of 76 Oscar nominations, the highest total ever. Based on TheWrap’s count, 76 of the 235 individual nominees across all 23 competitive categories from this year’s films were women, or approximately 23.3%.

The major acting categories this year included a record 9 actors of color among the 20 nominees, or 45%. The list includes Black performers and actors of Asian and Pakistani descent. The Best Actor category was dominated for the first time by actors of color, 3 out of 5, or 60%. Wins for actors of color included Daniel Kaluuya for best supporting actor in “Judas and the Black Messiah” and Yuh-Jung Youn for supporting actress.

In a coup for female producers, Best Actress winner Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”) and “Nomandland” Best Director winner Chloe Zhao were part of the five-person producing team on the film, along with Mollye Asher.

Other wins for women outside the acting category included:

• Emerald Fennell, for her original screenplay “Promising Young Woman”
• Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson, who became the first Black women to win for best makeup and hairstyling, for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
• H.E.R. and lyricist Tiara Thomas for their original song “Fight for You” for “Judas and the Black Messiah”
• Dana Murray, producer of Best Animated Feature “Soul”
• Ann Roth, costume designer for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
• Pippa Ehrlich, one of three producers on the Documentary Feature “My Octopus Teacher”
• Alice Doyard, a producer of the doc short winner “Collette”
• set decorator Jan Parsale, who shared the Production Design award with Donald Graham Burt for “Mank”
• Michellee Couttolenc, one of five sound design winners for “Sound of Metal”