In this op-ed, writer Sara Li unpacks Golden Globes 2020 and how the ceremony ignored some of the many culturally-relevant movies and shows made by women this year.

At Golden Globes 2020, Women-Created Stories Weren’t Recognized Enough.jpg

Another year, another award season that falls upon us in a flurry of designer wear, meme-able faux pas, and glitzy after parties. Golden Globes 2020 was no exception to the typical Hollywood schmoozing and snubbing, and as is tradition with award seasons past, this year’s Golden Globes rung in another year in which women were undermentioned, undervalued, or simply forgotten altogether. In case you missed it: no women were nominated in the Best Director category, and stories made by women (many of which centered women’s perspectives) were hardly featured at all.

The lack of inclusion at the Golden Globes, however much fun they are, isn’t entirely surprising, or even new. In the entire history of the Golden Globes, there have only been four female Best Director nominees, with one winner in 1983. The situation has gotten so embarrassingly loud that even Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais addressed it on Sunday night. “No female directors were nominated this year. No one. I mean, that's bad. I've had a word with the Hollywood Foreign Press, and they've guaranteed that will never happen again,” Gervais deadpanned. The punchline: “Because working with all the major studios, they’ve agreed to go back the way things were a few years ago, when they didn’t even hire women directors, and that will solve the problem. You’re welcome.”

Some of the year’s most interesting films and shows made by or about women didn’t receive their Golden Globes due: Unbelievable (starring Kaitlyn Dever), Little Women (directed by Greta Gerwig), Booksmart(directed by Olivia Wilde), and When They See Us (directed by Ava Duvernay), to name a few. The ones that did, like The Farewell and its star Awkwafina, felt massively important but still few and far between. These were important, timely stories created by women. And like much of Hollywood’s overall treatment of women, they were ignored.

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Netflix is far outpacing Hollywood in hiring female directors.jpg

The streaming giant, which also got slighted at the Jan. 5 awards show—its big-budget feature The Irishman, directed by Martin Scorsese, went home without a single statue— had women helming 20% of its 53 original US films last year, according to the Annenberg Inclusive Initiative at the University of South California, which tracks Hollywood’s diversity statistics. That was nearly double the 10.6% rate of representation for women directors across the 100 top-grossing US films of 2019. (The Netflix number excludes documentaries, non-English films, and international Netflix originals.)

In recent years, Netflix has been focused on hiring a more diverse workforce overall, in large part to reflect its increasingly diverse audience. In addition, the streaming service, which continues to spend large, has been more willing than the entrenched studios to take risks on movies that may not necessarily be blockbusters.

“Netflix’s value for inclusion is reflected in their 2019 slate,” said Stacy L. Smith, founder of the initiative and an associate professor of communication at USC. “Legacy studios must recognize that the world and the talent pipeline look vastly different from their hiring practices and actions to reflect that reality.”

Arguably, they already have. While the share of female directors of top films from 2007 to 2019 is a paltry 4.8%, the figure for 2019 was the highest percentage in more than a decade. “One notable reason for this jump in 2019 was that Universal Pictures had five films with women directors at the helm in the top 100 movies,” Smith said. “Yet there is still much more progress needed to reach parity for women behind the camera.”

That’s especially the case for women of color, who directed four of the past year’s top 100-grossing films—a record number, but off of a very low base. “Less than 1% of all directors across 13 years were women of color,” said Smith. “While 2019 is a banner year for women, we will not be able to say there is true change until all women have access and opportunity to work at this level.”

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AP PHOTO/ELISE AMENDOLA