The Academy Awards 2026 was a good evening for women. For the first time, a woman won the best cinematography award. And if it’s any indication that 4 out of the 5 nominees this year were women, the newly introduced category for casting means that more women have a chance to take a statue home.
But before we get too happy about the role of women in the industry, let’s check in on what happens when the films that were justly celebrated – and it was a pretty good crop – are localized. And since this is my particular area of expertise, let’s look at the dubbing into German. For the ten best picture nominees, only two (2) dubbing scripts were written by a woman. Okay, a small sample, right? The year before, again, two (2). The year before that, you guessed it. In fact, in the last five years, only 8 dubbing scripts for Oscar-nominated films were written by a female dubbing scriptwriter.
It looks the same for dubbing direction. Out of the 50 nominees, two were German OVs, one wasn’t dubbed, and there is no info on the writing/directing team for one more. That leaves 46 possibilities for a female dubbing director. And you might have guessed it, only eight of those dubs were directed by a woman, or more precisely 7.5, since one of them was co-directed by a man.
None of the Oscar winners in the last five years got a German dubbing script, or was dub-directed by, a woman.
And if that wasn’t depressing enough, I’ll let you know that the films that did get a female dubbing director or scriptwriter were, among others, “Barbie,” “Poor Things,” and “Women Talking.”
Another sample comes from the Synchronverband Diversity Initiative. A few years ago, they looked at who wrote and directed the dubs for the top ten grossing films between 2016 and 2019. 20% were written by women, and for directing the number is only slightly better – 25%. The numbers stay the same if you look at so-called arthouse films. 19% and 27%. And in an equally depressingly analogy to the Academy Award nominated films, the films that were dubbed by women writers and directors had titles like “Fifty Shades of Grey,” “Sing,” and “Suffragette.” Obviously, the idea of “we need a woman to do this” when dubbing producers see themes like erotica or women’s rights is still something that exists in German dubbing.
In the case of the Oscar nominees, the fact that the Academy routinely undervalues comedy for best picture might be a contributing factor to this incredibly poor performance. If you analyze the Synchronverband findings, women have a marginally better chance to dub funny stuff. The Academy doesn’t have a separate category for comedy, but perhaps if we look at animation, things are different? Uh – marginally.
Of the 25 nominated animated feature films from 2022 to 2026, one didn’t have dialogue at all (“Flow”), and the Synchronkartei doesn’t list info on the dubbing teams for 3 more. We have 6 out of 21 dubbing scripts written by women, and 4 out of 21 female dubbing directors.
If I look around at my colleagues writing dubbing scripts, I see a rough 50/50 distribution. The number of women writing the dubbing scripts for high profile movies consistently hovers around 20%. Perhaps I have found the mythical 20% “cultural nuance” that AI cannot provide? I’m only half joking …
Any thoughts on this from the international dubbing community? Or is it just us Germans?
