The Oscars have a long and storied history, and with plenty of long-standing records that date back decades, and plenty of records that are still being broken to this day. The 2025 Oscar nominations have yet to be announced, and despite knowing the winners and nominations from many of the other awards shows, the Oscars are still anyone’s game. Unfortunately, the Oscars still have a pretty poor track record when it comes to recognizing the outstanding women in the field, save for one specific category.
The Best Actress award has existed as long as the Oscars have, and the Best Supporting Actress award has been around as long as the Best Supporting Actor award has. The Academy has been giving awards to women in that regard, but unfortunately, the remaining fields have remained very male-dominated throughout the many years of the event. The one category that women do dominate in isn’t one of the most prestigious, but, as with every award, it is integral to the quality of a film.
Best Costume Design Is The Oscars Category Women Win The Most
The Majority Of The Awards Given Have Been Earned By Women
The best costume design Oscar was introduced at the 21st Academy Awards ceremony in 1949, and since then, women have won the Oscar for the category 63 times, meaning that women have won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design 65% of the time. Not including the actress categories, as those obviously have been won by women 100% of the time, this is the highest winning percentage for women among the Oscar categories, and is a stark contrast when compared to categories like Best Director, which has had 3 total wins by women since the beginning of the event.
The most recent winner was Holly Waddington for her work on Poor Things, and the most recent male winner was Mark Bridges for Phantom Thread in 2017, highlighting the dominance of women in the category.
Within the Costume Design category, the biggest name was Edith Head, a costume designer who worked on hundreds of films throughout her career, earning a total of 35 Oscar nominations for costume design, winning eight in total. With 8 awards, she is in fourth place for the highest number of Oscar wins by a single person, and the most awarded woman in the history of the event. The most recent winner was Holly Waddington for her work on Poor Things, and the most recent male winner was Mark Bridges for Phantom Thread in 2017, highlighting the dominance of women in the category.
Women’s Best Costume Design Oscar Win Record Won’t Be Broken Anytime Soon
Nothing Else Is Even Close In Terms Of Wins
The next highest number of category wins by women comes in at 34 wins for the Oscar for Best Documentary Short, with a 41% win rate since its introduction in 1941. While percentage wise, it’s not too far off, the total number of wins is almost half that of Best Costume Design, and with the continued dominance of women in that field in particular, that difference will likely only increase. Even as the Oscars still disregard talented women in categories like Best Director, there are at least some awards they are consistently given credit for.
