Glass Ceiling

Oscars' Year for Women

Bigelow could make history.

Female actors like Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock outperformed their male counterparts at the box office last year. Women directed many of the biggest films, and female audiences proved to be important ticket buyers with the Twilight series, The Blind Side, and Alice in Wonderland. But the year’s biggest breakthrough was Kathryn Bigelow, who has a good chance of taking home the Oscar for The Hurt Locker. She would be the first female to win best director. Only three other women have been nominated, and for the past quarter century, women have directed just 7 to 9 percent of movies. Bigelow is all the more unique for making it to the top of her profession by directing traditionally male-dominated subjects, like war, instead of chick flicks. Bigelow wants to be known as a director, not a woman director, but nevertheless, many women are cheering her on. "I get tears in my eyes thinking about it,” writer-director Shana Feste says. “I'm rooting for her, man.”