The Brief

While the only officially gendered awards for the Oscars are for acting, it’s no secret the Academy historically has favored men when it comes to handing out statuettes. Between 1929 and 2026, women made up less than 18% of all nominees, according to a report by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

If you exclude the acting nominees, women have been nominated for just under 13% of all awards in the nearly century since the awards began, said Stacy L. Smith, who founded the initiative in 2005 to track inequality in entertainment.

Smith said the numbers, while stark, aren’t surprising.

“This industry cannot change itself,” Smith said. “To create change, you really need to work with folks and bring them in.”

To better understand where gender disparity stands today, we analyzed who actually speaks in the 10 films up for what many consider to be the highest honor in film: best picture at this Sunday’s Academy Awards.

Why? Because gender disparity in dialogue tells us something about the kinds of films that get nominated for awards — or made in the first place — and whose stories tend to be institutionally valued.

We went into this analysis knowing that historically, films that contend for best picture have been dominated by stories driven by male characters. We analyzed the 10 nominated films of 2026 and also analyzed the 2025 nominees to determine the most recent patterns.

Our findings: Women characters spoke about a quarter of the words. That’s down from a third of words in last year’s nominated films.

“Whether we look at just who's on screen, and now when we look at how much they speak, your findings reiterate this real lack of inclusion for women and girls on screen,” Smith said.

The details:

Men overwhelmingly dominate dialogue in eight films. In each — save for Bugonia — at least 70% of the words go to men. Bugonia has the narrowest difference at 56% men and 44% women, snagging the third-highest percentage of female dialogue.

Two films stand out for having twice as much dialogue by women than the overall average of 25%. In Sentimental Value, women speak 57% of the words, and in Hamnet, they speak 51%.

One Battle After Another is the only film where an explicitly nonbinary character speaks. However, their number of words spoken — 25 — is so small compared to the rest of the dialogue that it comes out to 0.2% of the film.

Hamnet is the only best picture nominee to be directed by a woman: Chloé Zhao.

How this compares to last year

Last year, women spoke the majority of words in three films: Emilia Perez, Wicked and I’m Still Here. In all three, women spoke at least 60% of the words.

In 2025, like this year, one film directed by a woman, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, was nominated for best picture.

Why lead characters matter 

This year, Sentimental Value, Hamnet and Bugonia have the biggest share of dialogue by women among the best picture nominees. They’re also the only films with a lead woman character.

Michelle (Emma Stone), the main character of Bugonia, speaks the most out of the three women in lead roles. Of the leads in nominated films, she ranks fourth overall behind Marty (Timothée Chalamet) in Marty Supreme, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) in Frankenstein and her own co-lead, Teddy (Jesse Plemons).

Agnes (Jessie Buckley) from Hamnet ranks fifth. Nora (Renate Reinsve) from Sentimental Value ranks eighth behind the male leads from One Battle After Another and Train Dreams.

We should note that what constitutes a “lead” role can be subjective. For the purposes of this analysis, we based it on plot summaries and the prominence of the character in the arc of the film.

In most films, lead characters talk more than people in supporting roles. Sentimental Value and Train Dreams are the exceptions. Stellan Skarsgård is nominated for best supporting actor for his role as Gustav Borg in Sentimental Value. Borg speaks about 2,000 words, while his daughter, Nora, speaks about 1,300 in what’s considered a lead role. And in Train Dreams, a man narrates (Will Patton) and speaks about 1,500 words, while Robert Grainier (Joe Edgerton) speaks about 1,400.

Half of last year’s best picture nominees had a woman as the lead character. Female leads outnumbered male leads seven to six, and they generally spoke a greater share of dialogue than them too — save for Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) from Conclave and Bob Dylan (Chalamet) from A Complete Unknown.

Unlike this year, not all films with a woman in a lead role had majority women’s dialogue overall. In Anora and The Substance, women still spoke less than men.

However, lead characters did speak more words than any other character individually.

To try to measure how interested characters are in themselves compared to others and compare that across genders, the analysis looked at how often characters speak “I” words such as “I,” “me” or “my” (among others) versus “you” words like “you,” “your” or “yours” (among others).

We found that women speak more about themselves in half of the best picture nominees. That includes Sentimental Value, Bugonia, Frankenstein, Marty Supreme and The Secret Agent. Admittedly, this is a limited evaluation. It doesn't include first-person plural words like “we,” it doesn’t include third-person pronouns like “he,” “she” or “they,” and it doesn't include the names of characters if they're used to address others. The bottom line: It shouldn't be taken as definitive, especially not without context from the movie.

What women talk about on screen has been the subject of interest for some time. In 1985, Alison Bechdel, a graphic artist, started talking about her criteria for watching a film. Now commonly called the Bechdel test, she said a film had to 1) feature two women characters who 2) talk to each other about 3) something other than a man. This analysis did not measure whether the best picture nominees passed the Bechdel Test, but it’s nonetheless an alternative way to measure women’s representation.

Looking at this data comprehensively — while taking into account the percent of words spoken by women, which films have a woman lead, the content of women’s dialogue and its relationship to their share of words — one film emerges as a standout.

And the Oscar for Most Woman-Driven Story goes to …

An image from the film "Sentimental Value."

(

MK2 Films

)

Directed by Joachim Trier, the Norwegian film Sentimental Value follows sisters Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) as they reunite with their estranged father, filmmaker Gustav Borg (Skarsgård). Elle Fanning also stars in a supporting role as actor Rachel Kemp. Aside from best picture, the film received eight other nominations.

Sentimental Value has the highest percentage of words spoken by women. It’s one of just three films with a woman lead. And women refer to themselves more than they refer to the characters they speak to.

It’s the only film where women speak the majority of words and where their word choice favors themselves.

How we got here

Sexism in Hollywood has been the subject of scholarly research, books and, yes, movies. Women are underrepresented in what’s known as “below-the-line” roles, as well as in top executive positions. While the #MeToo movement that called out powerful men in Hollywood led to some actions, change has been slow.

Carolyn Finger, a former media analyst at Variety and Luminate, said conversations around representation — like the #OscarsSoWhite social media campaign in 2015 — help to bolster change in the industry. But there’s still much work to be done.

“What I’ve observed is that when those conversations happen, there is incremental change, but it’s not often sustained change,” Finger said.

This dialogue analysis, she added, “look[s] at who literally has a voice.”

To be clear, the quantity of words spoken is just one measure. On screen, sometimes silence, an action or a particular facial expression carries a greater message than words could convey. And a male-driven story may still have strong, nuanced and well-written women characters.

What's next

Smith said that to create change, studios need to adopt more equitable hiring practices and ensure the films they produce reflect the people watching them.

“If you’re a shareholder, if you go to the movies and buy tickets. If you support these companies by watching their shows, communicate back at what you’re not seeing and why that’s a problem,” Smith said.

Still, this year could be a potentially historic Oscars ceremony. The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative reported that a record-tying 33% of this year’s Oscar nominees are women. Hamnet director Chloé Zhao is the second woman, and first woman of color, to be nominated for best director twice. And if she wins, she’ll be the first woman to win best director more than once.

The 98th Academy Awards will take place 4 p.m. Sunday.

The two candidates for Los Angeles mayor, incumbent Karen Bass and challenger Nithya Raman, traded sharp jabs Wednesday night over homelessness, housing and police hiring in the first debate of the general election season.

The debate, hosted by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association, came as both campaigns began ramping up door-to-door canvassing in a race that’s expected to be close.

Bass, who was elected mayor in 2022, finished five points ahead of Raman in June but is considered vulnerable with unfavorable ratings at 57% in a poll taken before the primary.

Homelessness

During the debate, Raman, who represents Council District 4, said Bass had not made enough progress on the No. 1 issue facing Los Angeles: homelessness.

“You’ve been the mayor for four years and the results have not changed — the results are visible on our streets,” Raman said.

The latest homeless count showed unsheltered homelessness rose 8% from January 2025 to January 2026. The increase followed a two-year drop of 17.5%.

Bass countered that her Inside Safe program has brought thousands of people off of the streets and pointed out Raman was head of the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee until recently and therefore shared responsibility for the city’s progress on the issue.

“She has been the point person for homelessness — a very powerful position that she declared as powerful when she lost it,” Bass said.

Raman touted a 49% drop in unsheltered homelessness in her council district, which stretches from Silver Lake to Sherman Oaks.

Bass claimed Inside Safe was largely responsible for the drop.

If elected, Raman promised to conduct an audit of homelessness spending in her first six months of office and said she would fully staff a new Bureau of Homelessness Oversight to hold the city accountable for its spending on the issue.

Auditors have also flagged major problems with the handling of tax dollars by the regional L.A. Homeless Services Authority. The failures stem from poor bookkeeping and accounting of taxpayer money at the agency, which spent over $800 million in public funds last fiscal year.

Raman also promised to lobby L.A. County more forcefully than Bass for mental health, drug abuse and other social services for the unhoused.

Housing

The two also sparred over housing policy, with Raman saying the city needed more density in housing to address a severe shortage.

“This is a massive problem for the future of Los Angeles,” Raman said. “Let’s have a Planning Department that does the work to build these units, zone for these units.”

Raman said the city is “not zoned for more housing,” adding that’s why the state has stepped in with mandates for more dense housing in cities and counties across California.

Raman supported the law.

Bass opposed it.

“I do not support Sacramento telling us what to do,” Bass said. “The best way to build is to reach agreement with communities.”

Bass has billed herself as someone who would do more to preserve residential neighborhoods in the city and protect them from density. She added that 42,000 units of affordable housing were in the pipeline.

Policing

The two tangled over the hiring of police officers, too.

Bass pointed to a 2020 social media post by Raman that declared “defund the police.”

“She’s irresponsible in what she talks about,” Bass said.

Raman returned the verbal jab, arguing that Bass was irresponsible for backing a big raise for police officers in 2023.

“This is about fiscal management of public tax dollars,” Raman said. "This contract gave raises to the [Police Department] that our city couldn't afford and we suffered as a result.

”We cut street lighting, we cut pothole repair — we have more potholes on our streets than we did before," she continued. “We do less graffiti removal than we did before.”

Bass has said the raises were necessary to recruit new officers and keep current officers from leaving the department.

Raman also criticized Police Chief Jim McDonnell’s response to federal immigration raids, noting he refused to enforce a state law that largely prohibited federal agents from wearing masks. The council member said she didn’t believe the chief’s response to ICE raids “met the moment,” stopping short of saying whether she would seek to remove him.

Supporting business

Bass and Raman also fought over whether the city had sufficiently supported the entertainment industry.

“We need a tax credit and advocacy in Sacramento for the kind of tax credit that Georgia has, that’s the same as New Jersey has that’s taking jobs away from here,” Raman said.

Bass said she appointed a film czar to fight for such policies and criticized Raman for doing nothing on the issue.

“You have been on the City Council for six years,” Bass said. “You’ve been at City Hall twice as long as I have. I realize you want to pitch yourself as somebody from the outside. But where were you? You’ve introduced no motion for the entertainment industry.”

Bass said Raman would not be a good mayor because she lacks support from any of her colleagues on the City Council.

“She has no support from the council members because nobody can work with her,” Bass said.

Raman said she works well with colleagues and that Bass had locked up their endorsements before she made her last-minute entry into the race.

Five news reporters and two members of the military who were invited to an event at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California were briefly detained at gunpoint by security officers who thought they were gate crashers, according to local news reports.

The incident happened Monday ahead of an invitation-only groundbreaking for a new training facility for missile operators at the federal airfield near Santa Barbara, Calif. Reporters from Noozhawk and KEYT were among those detained, and both outlets published articles detailing the detainment.

In a statement to Noozhawk, a Space Launch Delta 30 Public Affairs spokesperson called the incident a breakdown in communication.

“Vandenberg Space Force Base is experiencing an increased number of unauthorized entry attempts,” the statement said. “Every potential unauthorized presence must be treated as a legitimate threat until proven otherwise. While we recognize this may have been unsettling, the security of the base and its personnel is our priority.”

The reporters and military members were part of a convoy being escorted onto the base by uniformed public affairs staff in a government minivan when they were suddenly ordered out of their vehicles with their hands up, according to news reports.

Officers pointed guns, sirens were sounded and barricades went up at the gate entrance, KEYT reported.

The two military members assigned to the base — one enlisted and one a junior officer — were handcuffed and placed in base vehicles, while the civilians were ordered to sit on a curb, Noozhawk reported.

The reporters for outlets also including KSBY-TV and the Santa Maria Times/Lompoc Record were held for more than 30 minutes, causing them to miss the event. All were let go without further incident.

“We respect the military’s need to provide security for the base,” Tom Bolton, Noozhawk’s editor in chief, said in a statement Wednesday. “But clearly what occurred was unfortunate and unnecessary, and potentially dangerous, as firearms were drawn.”

Bolton said he hopes to have a conversation with base leadership later this week to review what happened in the hopes of preventing a similar occurrence in the future.

As severe wildfires burn across the Western U.S., California has adopted the toughest rules in the country to help protect communities from burning. Homeowners in wildfire-prone areas will be required to limit plants within five feet of their house, a protective measure that wildfire experts say can help prevent homes from igniting.
Research shows that dry, dense vegetation around buildings can cause wildfires to spread. In extreme conditions, high winds carry a deluge of tiny, burning embers far beyond the fire itself. When those embers get caught in vegetation, they can ignite, spreading flames to nearby buildings and homes.
Wednesday's vote by the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection comes after years of debate and delays. The state originally considered rules that would have restricted all vegetation within five feet of a house, aside from well-maintained trees. That generated pushback from some communities, concerned about losing greenery in their gardens and the cost of yard maintenance.
California regulators ultimately struck a compromise about plants allowed within the five-foot zone, known as Zone Zero. Lawns, flowers and non-woody plants up to 18 inches tall will be allowed, unless they are located directly under the roofline of a house. Trees will be allowed, though branches must be trimmed five feet away from a structure. The rules will apply to new construction right away, but will be phased in for existing structures, affecting almost 2 million homes in high-risk areas.

State regulators say the rules reflect the new reality of more extreme wildfires, driven in part by rising temperatures from climate change. More than 57,000 homes and buildings have been destroyed in California in the last decade, according to state regulators.

"California's faced an existential crisis that has affected our health, that has affected our finances related to our ability to buy and sell homes, to insure homes and has put us in a very precarious place," testified Yana Valachovic of the University of California Cooperative Extension at Wednesday's hearing, who also advised the state on the new rules.

Growing tensions across Western states

California's debate reflects growing tensions across the Western U.S. about how communities should prepare for wildfires. Wildfire experts warn even fires that start in open, wildland areas can quickly become urban fires, destroying thousands of homes in neighborhoods that residents never thought were at risk, like in the 2025 Los Angeles fires. This summer, more than 800 homes were destroyed in Spokane, Wash., by three wildfires that burned through dense neighborhoods.
Across several states, homeowners in public meetings have said wildfire regulations threaten private property rights, reduce urban wildlife habitat and require costly maintenance.
"You are about to approve a set of regulations that will cost millions of California homeowners tens of billions of dollars," testified Dave Lefkowitz, president of the Mandeville Canyon Association, a community group in the Los Angeles hills. "The math is insuperable."

Vegetation management rules were recently defeated in both Oregon and Washington after strong public pushback, including misinformation that spread online. Some community groups wanted regulators to wait for more scientific research on wildfire spread.

Research shows plants can increase risk

In experiments, researchers have shown that even green plants can ignite in the dry, windy conditions of an extreme wildfire. Analyses of past California wildfires have also shown that homes with vegetation predominantly within 6 feet of the exterior walls were at higher risk of being lost. Managing vegetation also creates "defensible space" for firefighters, providing better access for defending a structure.

California has long been at the forefront of wildfire policy, pioneering regulations that other states have adopted. For almost 20 years, California's wildfire building codes have required homes to use fire-resistant materials for construction. A handful of other states recently adopted similar codes. Research shows that while there are no guarantees a house will survive a fire, protections are strongest when homeowners address both building materials and vegetation. Even in some of the most severe wildfires in recent years, some homes made it through.
California regulators say the widespread regulations are needed because voluntary measures don't provide enough protection. Communities are safest when all homeowners comply, since one home with dense, dry vegetation can spread fire to its neighbors. Insurance companies in California are also required to provide discounts to homeowners that make their homes more fire-resistant.

New rules depend on inspections

While California's new rules provide more flexibility for homeowners, some wildfire experts say they don't go far enough, given that any combustible material next to a house could pose a risk. The new vegetation rules will be enforced by local fire departments and state agencies that do home inspections every year. Those inspectors will bear the brunt of educating homeowners and ensuring compliance.
"I want the board to understand what this compromise asks of local inspection programs," Todd Lando of the Central Marin Fire Department testified at the hearing. "A clean Zone Zero is a five-minute inspection with one question: Is anything combustible within five feet? Easy for the homeowner to understand and take action on." Lando says the new rules will involve more conditional judgements by inspectors, opening up debate with homeowners that could affect compliance.

California regulators say inspectors will focus on educating homeowners at first, before compliance becomes mandatory. For existing homes, the new vegetation rules will go into effect in 2029 at the earliest.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Clemente Larraín, a doctoral student from Chile, chose his program at UCLA because it offered subsidized childcare on campus. His young daughter was enrolled for free, giving him the peace of mind to focus on his studies.

Now, the university has thrown a wrench in those plans.

In an email to families enrolled in UCLA’s Early Care and Education program, Darnell Hunt, executive vice chancellor and provost, announced two university-run childcare centers will close at the end of the 2026-27 academic year because the university has determined “the program is not sustainable.”

“ For international students, this is the worst news because we don't have networks here," Larraín said. "We don't have family. Some of us have some friends, but not too close to just trusting them to our kids.”

He earns around $3,000 a month working on campus, which he said barely covers his rent, forcing the family to dig into savings. Meanwhile, his wife is waiting for a work permit so she can start to bring in additional income.

Having to find full time care for their daughter is causing immense stress.

“ This obviously changed radically the experience of the graduate students with family at UCLA,” Larraín said.

Limited childcare options for parents

The announcement comes as a changing landscape is making it harder for parents to find childcare across California. A new report by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley found that the rollout of a new grade for 4-year-olds in the state’s public schools is having unintended consequences for childcare businesses. Those businesses have typically cared for children 5 and under but are now losing more children to transitional kindergarten.

Between 2019 and 2025, about 1,100 preschools have closed across California.

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, an associate professor of Asian American studies at UCLA, has two children enrolled in a UCLA-run childcare center, which she said costs her around $6,000 a month — and that’s at a subsidized rate.

“Having a high-quality, safe, reliable childcare option for my children just allows me to do my job as a UCLA professor, which includes research and publishing, but also teaching and mentorship of undergraduate and graduate students,” Gandhi said. “I'm really not sure how I'll be able to do that job if I don't have adequate childcare next year.”

Gandhi said the only alternative she has for her daughter is Bright Horizons Westwood, which is part of a large chain of childcare facilities across the U.S.

“ But to be honest it doesn't have as good of a kind of teacher-child ratio as [UCLA's Early Care and Education] does, and it has a super long wait list,” she said.

LAist has reached out to the childcare facility to ask about its waitlist, teacher-child ratio and rates.

Earlier this year, Gandhi said, tuition at UCLA’s Early Care and Education program increased by 4%, Gandhi said. At the time, UCLA also announced it would eliminate “all food program services (which includes all meals, baby formula and food, milk and snacks), discontinuing support for diapers and formula, not backfilling vacant positions, and other cost reducing measures.”

After families protested, the university backed down.

‘Disconnected from its mission’

Yvonne Yang, an assistant clinical professor at UCLA in psychiatry, called it "callous and heartless," even "cruel" that the university decided to close down the childcare centers.

“It means to me that the university has completely become disconnected from its mission and basically lost its soul and is focusing only on profits,” said Yang, who is also a physician and researcher at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center.

Yang said she’s now competing with all the families enrolled in the UCLA program for the limited childcare options available on the west side.

 ”When our kids were young and still breastfeeding, moms are welcome to just walk up to the daycare and to feed our kids during the workday, which is so much better than having to pump,” she said. “It's just a way of maintaining that connection with your kids so early in that transition.”

Having the childcare center on campus allowed her to integrate having a family life and being a professor, she said.