Female Directors Who Won Best Director Oscar: Full List

Female directors who won best director Oscar are a celebrated but tiny club — just three filmmakers across nearly a century of Academy Awards history. Kathryn Bigelow broke the glass ceiling in 2010 with The Hurt Locker, Chloé Zhao claimed the prize in 2021 for Nomadland, and Jane Campion won in 2022 for The Power of the Dog on her second nomination. Behind those victories lies a longer story of pioneering nominees, persistent nomination gaps, and recent momentum that finally put multiple women on the same ballot. This evergreen guide honors every woman who has won or been nominated for Best Director using official Academy records — with context on why the category remained overwhelmingly male for decades and what changed after the post-2016 membership expansion.

We built this list from the Academy’s awards database at Oscars.org, verified ceremony dates, and credited directing roles only. For companion coverage, see our first Black Oscar winners in history timeline, Oscar Best Picture winners by year complete list, and how are Oscar winners chosen voting explained mechanics guide. This is awards history — not red-carpet outfit analysis.

Female Directors Who Won Best Director Oscar: The Complete Winners List

As of the 96th Academy Awards in 2024, exactly three women have won the Oscar for Best Director. Every other year in the category’s history — the Academy first presented directing prizes at the 1st ceremony in 1929 — a man collected the statuette. That ratio makes female directors who won best director Oscar some of the most scrutinized milestones in modern Hollywood history, celebrated for craft and held up as evidence of how slowly the industry’s top prize room diversified.

• Kathryn Bigelow — The Hurt Locker (82nd Academy Awards, March 7, 2010)
• Chloé Zhao — Nomadland (93rd Academy Awards, April 25, 2021)
• Jane Campion — The Power of the Dog (94th Academy Awards, March 27, 2022)

Each victory carried symbolic weight beyond the film itself. Bigelow’s win ended a 81-year wait for any woman in the category. Zhao’s win made her the first woman of color to claim Best Director. Campion’s win came nearly three decades after her first nomination for The Piano, making her the second woman ever to earn multiple Best Director nominations. Together they define the entire competitive record for female directors who won best director Oscar — a list short enough to memorize, long enough to reflect systemic barriers.

Kathryn Bigelow: First Woman to Win Best Director (2010)

Kathryn Bigelow entered Oscar night on March 7, 2010, as a favorite for The Hurt Locker, her tense Iraq War drama about an elite bomb-disposal unit. She had already made action landmarks including Point Break and Strange Days, but the Academy had never nominated her for Best Director before. That year she competed against her former spouse James Cameron, nominated for Avatar — a storyline the press amplified even though voters insisted craft, not tabloid drama, decided the race.

When Bigelow’s name was called, she became the first woman in history to win Best Director. Her speech thanked the Academy, her crew, and the men and women serving in the armed forces. The Hurt Locker also won Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and three craft Oscars — a sweep that cemented the night as a directing milestone. For any list of female directors who won best director Oscar, Bigelow’s name sits at the top not only alphabetically but chronologically: she opened the door every subsequent winner walked through.

Bigelow was not the first woman nominated for Best Director. That distinction belongs to Italy’s Lina Wertmüller, nominated in 1977 for Seven Beauties. Bigelow was, however, the first to convert a nomination into a win — a gap of 33 years between Wertmüller’s historic shortlist and Bigelow’s gold.

Chloé Zhao: Nomadland and a Landmark 2021 Win

At the 93rd Academy Awards on April 25, 2021, Chloé Zhao won Best Director for Nomadland, her lyrical drama about van-dwelling Americans navigating economic precarity after a plant shutdown. Zhao blended nonprofessional performers with Frances McDormand’s lead performance, shooting across the American West in a style that felt both documentary-intimate and mythic. The film also won Best Picture, Best Actress for McDormand, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Zhao’s victory expanded the female directors who won best director Oscar record in two ways. She became the second woman to win the category after Bigelow. She also became the first woman of color and the first filmmaker of Asian descent to win Best Director — milestones the Academy highlighted during a ceremony still operating under COVID-19 protocols in Los Angeles’ Union Station. Zhao thanked her cast, her collaborators, and everyone willing to share their stories for the film.

The 2021 directing race was historically female-heavy at the nomination stage: Zhao won while Emerald Fennell was also nominated for Promising Young Woman, marking the first time two women contended for Best Director in the same year. That twin nomination was progress; Zhao’s solo win kept the all-time victor count at two until the following year.

Jane Campion: Second Win on a Second Nomination (2022)

Jane Campion had already reshaped Oscar history before she joined the female directors who won best director Oscar club. At the 66th Academy Awards in 1994, she was nominated for The Piano — only the second woman ever shortlisted for Best Director after Wertmüller. Campion did not win that night; Steven Spielberg took the prize for Schindler’s List. She spent the next decades making fiercely personal work including The Portrait of a Lady, Holy Smoke!, Bright Star, and the acclaimed series Top of the Lake.

When The Power of the Dog arrived in 2021, Campion delivered a psychologically layered western starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, and Jesse Plemons. At the 94th Academy Awards on March 27, 2022, she won Best Director — becoming the third woman to claim the prize and the first to win on a second nomination. Her speech thanked the Academy, her cast, and her fellow nominees. Although The Power of the Dog lost Best Picture to CODA, Campion’s directing Oscar anchored the night for advocates tracking gender parity behind the camera.

Campion’s win also underscored how rare repeat opportunities are for women in the category. Only she and Wertmüller (nominee only) had multiple Best Director nominations before the 96th Academy Awards cycle. Every other woman nominated for Best Director had, through 2024, received a single shot unless Campion’s two-nomination record expanded.

Every Woman Nominated for Best Director Before the Wins

Understanding female directors who won best director Oscar requires knowing who reached the ballot without winning. The Academy’s Best Director category has recognized nine directing nominations for women across seven filmmakers through the 96th Oscars:

• Lina Wertmüller — Seven Beauties (49th Academy Awards, 1977) — first woman nominated
• Jane Campion — The Piano (66th Academy Awards, 1994); later won for The Power of the Dog (2022)
• Sofia Coppola — Lost in Translation (76th Academy Awards, 2004)
• Kathryn Bigelow — The Hurt Locker (82nd Academy Awards, 2010) — won
• Greta Gerwig — Lady Bird (90th Academy Awards, 2018)
• Chloé Zhao — Nomadland (93rd Academy Awards, 2021) — won
• Emerald Fennell — Promising Young Woman (93rd Academy Awards, 2021)
• Justine Triet — Anatomy of a Fall (96th Academy Awards, 2024)

Wertmüller’s 1977 nomination was a seismic first — an Italian filmmaker recognized for a World War II tragicomedy in a category that had honored only men since the inaugural 1929 ceremony. Coppola’s 2004 nod for Lost in Translation made her the first American woman nominated in the category. Gerwig’s 2018 nomination for Lady Bird kept the conversation alive during the #OscarsSoWhite and Time’s Up era, even though she lost to Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water. Fennell shared the 2021 ballot with Zhao, and Triet’s 2024 nomination for Anatomy of a Fall — a French courtroom drama that also won Best Original Screenplay — showed international women continuing to break through.

The Nomination Gap: Why So Few Women Reach the Ballot

Hollywood’s Best Director nomination gap is not a mystery of taste alone — it reflects who gets financing, guild support, critics’ attention, and sustained careers. For decades studio tentpoles and awards campaigns centered male auteurs, while women were reportedly steered toward smaller dramas or shut out of franchise pipelines that build voter familiarity. The Directors Branch nominates Best Director contenders before the full Academy votes on winners; when that branch skewed male, women struggled to appear on five-slot shortlists even when their films earned Best Picture nominations.

Data tells the story bluntly. From 1929 through 2024, the Academy nominated well over 400 directing achievements — almost all men. Female directors who won best director Oscar represent less than one percent of winners. Nominees fare slightly better but remain statistically tiny. Critics and researchers have repeatedly documented how women direct a minority of top-grossing films yet receive an even smaller minority of Oscar directing recognition, a mismatch that fuels annual diversity audits every awards season.

The gap also intersects with race. No Black woman had been nominated for Best Director through the 96th Academy Awards in 2024, even as filmmakers including Ava DuVernay, Dee Rees, and Regina King earned acclaim outside the category or in other Oscars slots. Readers tracing intersectional firsts should pair this guide with our first Black Oscar winners in history timeline, which documents competitive wins across acting, music, and producing even as the directing prize remained elusive for Black filmmakers of any gender.

Recent Progress and the 2021–2024 Surge

The early 2020s produced the densest cluster of female Best Director activity in Oscar history. Zhao and Fennell shared the 2021 ballot. Campion won in 2022. Triet nominated in 2024. Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) became a cultural phenomenon and reportedly mounted a major Best Director campaign, though she was not nominated — a reminder that box-office dominance does not guarantee directing recognition. Still, the period from 2021 to 2024 featured more women in serious contention than the 1990s and 2000s combined.

Academy membership expansion after 2016 reportedly invited thousands of new voters, including more women and international filmmakers. That broader electorate may have helped films like Nomadland and Anatomy of a Fall build cross-branch support even before the Directors Branch weighed in. For readers who want the mechanics behind those votes — branch nominations, plurality finals, PwC tabulation — our how are Oscar winners chosen voting explained guide walks through every step.

Progress is not parity. Three female directors who won best director Oscar across 96 ceremonies is celebration-worthy and structurally insufficient at the same time. Studios still greenlight fewer women for prestige budgets; guild membership and critics’ groups have diversified faster than the directing Oscar winner list. The recent surge gives advocates data points; it does not close the gap overnight.

How Best Director Wins Relate to Best Picture

Two of the three films directed by female directors who won best director Oscar also won Best Picture: The Hurt Locker and Nomadland. The Power of the Dog won Best Director but lost Best Picture to CODA — a split that often happens when voters reward direction separately from ensemble consensus on the top prize. Tracking those splits matters because campaigns frequently pair directing and Best Picture narratives; when they diverge, the director’s Oscar can become the film’s primary legacy.

For ceremony-by-ceremony context on the top prize, browse our Oscar Best Picture winners by year complete list. Cross-referencing Best Picture and Best Director winners shows how rarely women have been in contention for both prizes in the same night — and how monumental 2010 and 2021 were when Bigelow and Zhao swept both.

Timeline: Female Best Director Milestones at the Oscars

• 1977 — Lina Wertmüller: first woman nominated for Best Director (Seven Beauties)
• 1994 — Jane Campion: second woman nominated (The Piano)
• 2004 — Sofia Coppola: first American woman nominated (Lost in Translation)
• 2010 — Kathryn Bigelow: first woman to win Best Director (The Hurt Locker)
• 2018 — Greta Gerwig: nominated for Lady Bird
• 2021 — Chloé Zhao: second woman to win (Nomadland); Emerald Fennell also nominated
• 2022 — Jane Campion: third woman to win (The Power of the Dog)
• 2024 — Justine Triet: nominated for Anatomy of a Fall

Why These Records Still Matter in 2026

Lists of female directors who won best director Oscar are more than trivia for awards-night quizzes. They document which stories the industry funds, which auteurs voters elevate, and how slowly prestige institutions reflect the audience’s diversity. Bigelow’s win did not flood the category with women the following year; Zhao and Campion had to rebuild momentum a decade later. Triet’s nomination proves international cinema keeps pressuring the gap, but the winner count still stands at three.

Readers comparing eras should remember that nomination is not a consolation prize — Wertmüller, Coppola, Gerwig, Fennell, and Triet changed what young filmmakers believed possible. Yet the Oscar record book separates nominees and winners, and the winner column for women remains achingly short. Tracking female directors who won best director Oscar is one lens; tracking how often women direct Best Picture nominees without directing nods is another. Both belong in any serious awards-history conversation on USA Celebs.

Explore More Awards Coverage

• Read our first Black Oscar winners in history for intersectional milestone context.
• Browse the Oscar Best Picture winners by year complete list for ceremony-by-ceremony champions.
• Learn how are Oscar winners chosen voting explained — branches, ballots, and PwC envelopes.
• Visit our Awards archive for records, snubs, and ceremony history.