USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and the Adobe Foundation have updated their Inclusion List with data from the 2024 Oscar Awards.
Despite the appearance of snubs in the directing category, the percentage of female nominees for the 2024 Oscars actually ties the record high.
This year, as in 2021, 32 percent of the nominees in the 19 feature races (the three short film categories and international feature film, which does not list individuals, were not included) are women.
The 2021 Awards, the first Oscars to take place after the killing of George Floyd, remains the high-water mark for diversity among nominees, with 20 percent hailing from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group and 11 percent comprising women of color.
In comparison, this year, 20 percent of nominees are from historically marginalized race or ethnicity (third place overall, behind 21 percent in 2019) and 5.7 percent represent women of color.
Both the percentage of male nominees and white nominees who have more than one Oscar nomination is 40 percent, compared with 30 percent of female nominees and 25 percent of nonwhite nominees.
Just 14 percent of women of color with an Oscar nomination have received a nom more than once.
The most nominated white man is composer John Williams (54 and counting), while the late costume designer Edith Head’s 35 noms is the record among white women. A diverse trio of men shares the record for most nominations for people from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups (filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, cinematographer James Wong Howe and actor-producer Denzel Washington have 10 each), while the most career nominations a woman of color has ever received is four (a feat accomplished by multiple women, including costume designer Ruth E. Carter, actor Viola Davis, sound editor Ai-Ling Lee and filmmaker Chloé Zhao).
The Inclusion List analyzes the effect of #OscarsSoWhite in comparing the percentage of nonwhite nominees in the 9 years before and after the hashtag took off in 2015 (9.5 percent and 17.1 percent).
However, over the full 96-year history of the Academy Awards, women comprise 17 percent of all feature nominees, people from historically marginalized racial or ethnic groups 6 percent and women of color fewer than 2 percent.
