The 2012 Academy Awards had six categories without any women nominated. This year that number has risen to seven no-women categories with 140 men nominated across 19 award categories and only 35 women nominated overall. Those numbers seem to beg the question, is the film industry getting better for women at all?
According to a Salon article, the 2012 Oscars were particularly bad for women: "None — zero — of the films in the best picture, best director, best adapted or original screenplay, best lead or supporting actor, and best supporting actress categories were directed by women," and all the major categories received more male nominations.
Melissa Silverstein, founder and editor of Women and Hollywood and co-founder of Athena Film Festival, told Huffpost Live this is because women have yet to break that mold.
"Every failure of a woman is looked as a failure of the entire gender and until we reach a critical mass of women, then we won't be looking at each individual person," Silverstein said.
Kathryn Bigelow's historic best director win in 2009 was a victory for women in film, but the fact that she remains the sole woman to receive that distinction -- and wasn't nominated for direction of the best picture film nomination "Zero Dark Thirty" this year -- suggests there is still a ways to go.
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