And the Oscar Goes To … Everyone?

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On March 2, the Academy Awards held their 97th ceremony, awarding 23 categories for achievement in film. Some categories have changed over the years, while others have been scrapped or swapped to meet modern standards. But one category has remained the same—the awards for acting.

Performance awards also hold another distinction. Since the Oscar’s inception, it has been and remains the only category segregated by gender.

That stood out to Lawrence R. Jones.

“It always struck me as odd that those rules were set up 100 years ago, when women did not have equal rights. Why do these rules still exist now, without any social questioning?” asks Jones.

Jones is a former New Jersey Superior Court judge who retired from the bench in 2017. He taught constitutional law for a time at Montclair State University and then Monmouth University, where he gained a reputation for assigning unique projects.

“While studying through textbooks and PowerPoints can have value, if that is all that students are asked to do, they can be missing out on a valuable opportunity to stretch their minds, and strengthen critical thinking skills by addressing new and complex current-day issues,” says Jones.

In August 2023, he brought his creative thinking to the University of New Mexico, where he charged his first group of constitutional law students to take a critical look at the Academy Awards.

“It is an interesting legal and social question for students—some of whom are possibly future lawyers—to contemplate and analyze,” says Jones.
“If, hypothetically, the Academy ever tried to expand segregation to other non-acting criteria, there might be a million lawsuits the next day on the grounds that such actions are discriminatory, violative of public policy and social principles of equality and equal protection,” Jones continues. “And also, how is the continuation of gender segregation fair to those actors who identify as gender neutral, or fair to female actors who may want to compete against all actors, based on talent and competitive spirit, regardless of gender identity?”

Jones goes on to say that, historically, the person who wins best male performance awards usually receives a greater financial boon to their careers compared with their female counterparts. “There are so many sub-issues to consider here,” he says.

The project was taken up eagerly by his students, and their work was so impressive that Jones decided to showcase their efforts to the outside world. In all, ten students, all female identifying, came together to fine-tune their research and build a 100-page proposal, which has been submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The proposal charges members of the Academy to create an official task force that examines the reasons behind the creation and maintenance of gender-segregated acting categories.

“Our end goal,” says Peyton Bowes, one of the contributing students, “is to inspire people to think about it honestly, and for the Academy to consider it and make a decision that is most genuinely beneficial for women, equality, and for people who don’t fit into gender categories.”

Sparking a conversation

Neither the students nor Jones know what impact (if any) their proposal might have on future Oscars. But at the very least, Jones and his students say they hope it begins an important conversation and offers transparency in a previously obscure decision.

“We have to start thinking about why is this the way it is, why was it implemented in this way,” says Marijose Ramirez, one of the authors of the proposal who has since graduated and begun her law career working in D.C. for Congresswoman Veronica Escobar from El Paso, Texas.
“I found nothing. There was no research or documentation as to why [the Academy] decided to have categories the way they did,” says Ramirez, adding that she was not surprised by the discovery. But she was surprised to learn that many Hollywood films utilize tax dollars to fund their creations.

“In my analysis, I advocated for these decisions to be shared with the public. Whatever decision [the Academy] comes to, I want them to explain why they are deciding to keep gender categories [or not]. It’s important for the public to know, especially if they’re paying into it,” says Ramirez.

Removing the gendered categories from major awards shows is not an entirely unprecedented move. The Grammys decided to drop the male and female qualifiers from their awards in 2012, also reducing their awards bloat from 109 to 78. At the time, concerns were raised that removing categories that explicitly acknowledged the achievements of women could leave them unknown and unrecognized. While the majority of all 2025 Grammy nominees were men, the more well-known categories like Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist were overwhelmingly filled with female-identifying nominees—and they won.

The students dubbed this repeating recognition of female artists in a de-segregated Grammys the “Taylor Swift” Principle. Swift has won the coveted Album of the Year award four times, breaking the record previously held by Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, and Paul Simon. Beyoncé has set a winning record for sheer number of Grammy awards received. The students argue that these precedents should be considered successes in breaking through the gender silo.

“Many people seem to automatically conclude that you can’t gender-integrate the Academy Awards, because if you do so then the men will dominate,” says Jones. “But last year at the Grammys, women won all the major awards. You just can never know for sure what will happen, and if gender integration worked over time at the Grammys, then a fair question is why not at least try it at the Oscars instead of automatically assuming the worst will happen?”

Students also discovered what they call the “Margot Robbie” Principle, which centers on the performance nominations for the film Barbie. While Ryan Gosling received an Oscar nod for his role in the film, Margot Robbie, who played the title character, did not. Each category, male and female, is limited to five total nominations. Had those awards not been segregated and therefore limited by gender, Robbie’s work could have been recognized.
“Margot Robbie wasn’t nominated because the category spots were filled up,” says Ramirez.

The proposal also acknowledged that actors who do not ascribe to a gender binary often remove themselves from consideration of the awards in general, as they do not feel comfortable aligning and competing in either category.

“Something that really drove me, to make sure it was included in the proposal, was thinking about nonbinary and transgender folks in the film industry, where you see those identities are more accepted compared with different jobs,” says Ramirez. “I feel like it’s contradicting to see that your own awards, your own report card, does not reflect that same acceptance.”

This concern is growing more traction in Hollywood, as various non-binary actors have spoken out about their hesitation to apply for gendered recognition. Non-binary actor Liv Hewson announced they would withdraw from the 2023 Emmys race, a gender-segregated television award show. Bella Ramsey, a non-binary actor who gained recognition in television’s Game of Thrones and The Last of Us, has expressed discomfort at aligning themself with a nomination for a female or male award.

Actors (and their team of agents, managers, and studio executives) must decide whether or not to place themselves up for award consideration. Jones ponders what it might mean for a traditionally recognized actor like Emma Stone, who has won Best Actress twice at the Oscars, to nominate herself in direct competition with male actors in the Best Actor category.

“If someone like that stepped up and did that, it doesn’t matter if they win or lose,” says Jones. “The impact of that could possibly be like when Billie Jean King took on Bobby Riggs [in the Battle of the Sexes]. She destroyed him in that match.”

Building on past protest campaigns

The students’ proposal examined various precedents, including those set by protests like the “Oscars So White” movement of 2015, which called for greater diversity of nominees. They also questioned whether or not the awards’ gender segregation contradicted the Constitution itself. They studied cases like J.E.B. v. Alabama, which held that a jury cannot use gender as a category to remove jurors. The U.S. v. Virginia case from 1996 found that women cannot be barred from admission to the previously all-male Virginia Military Institute. The majority opinion was written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“The principle set forth in U.S. v. Virginia of equal opportunity for women to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents is one in the spirit of the Equal Protection Clause,” the students note in their proposal.
Jones’s students are excited to know their classroom project has transformed into an official proposal, regardless of its ultimate outcome.

“I’ve never done any sort of project where it’s become anything other than a class project,” says Bowes. “It’s been fun to feel like we somehow contributed to society.”

Jones’s projects with his students have a habit of gaining life outside the classroom. His constitutional law class at Monmouth University ended up studying Major League Baseball (MLB) and called for a review of the almost perfect game pitched by Armando Galarraga in June 2010. That assignment eventually took on a life of its own and was featured on ESPN’s E60 documentary, 28 Outs: An Imperfect Story.

Baseball played a role in this assignment as well, as students studied the National Organization for Women v. Little League Baseball case from 1974, in which a young girl from New Jersey was kicked off her little league team based solely upon her gender, and the case of Jackie Robinson, whose boundary breaking was met with great resistance and concern in 1947 when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed him. His integration into the team also meant the MLB’s yearly awards became desegregated as well. Although some worried at the time that Robinson’s race would mean he was overlooked for the awards, Robinson went on to win the prized Rookie of the Year award and more.

“The Jackie Robinson award precedent of 1947-1949 arguably provides at least some historical examples of how a professional from a highly underserved population can in fact compete for—and win—merit-based annual awards, even when most of the other competitors and the voters themselves may be from largely different backgrounds,” the students conclude.

Reimagining the future

For Jones, it’s important to have future law students contemplate “new and novel issues, which maybe haven’t been addressed before. That’s how you make progress,” he says.

“The Academy Awards, just like other projects, is a vehicle to get students to start thinking in a constructive, expansive way, to advocate and look at both sides of issues based on precedents that are still relevant,” says Jones. “It’s not just the proposal of, ‘You should change,’ it’s looking at both sides, and weighing it, figuring out logically what makes the most sense.”

For Ramirez, understanding and being able to argue the opposing side has helped her better understand how to argue her own position.

“At the end of the day, I could defend both arguments well. Once I got into the groove of that, going back and forth and critically thinking about those things, it was fun to challenge my own beliefs,” says Ramirez. “That was something I really enjoyed, in building this proposal, to see how different everyone’s ideas were, and how, at the end, we were all still aiming for some reform that I feel we feel is needed. When wanting a societal change or a bigger cause to happen, it’s very important to bring in facts and different [angles] to the people considering a change.”

Whatever the Academy decides, to change or not to change, Jones and his students can’t wait to hear the results.