Read: Breaking down the 2020 Oscar nominations

Gerwig doesn’t need to be the one-woman symbol of Academy Award sexism, and indeed she expressed great positivity about the attention her film received in an interview after the nominations were unveiled. “The numbers are all moving in the right direction,” she said. “There have been great strides and we’ve got to keep going: keep writing, keep making, keep doing.” The main reason there’s been so much coverage of Gerwig being shut out for Best Director is that she had a real shot at making the list. Plenty of other excellent films made by women (and men) this year suffered far worse fates, getting only a nomination or two—or being ignored entirely.

Many of those snubbed movies didn’t fit the idea of “prestige” that has defined Oscar narratives for generations. This blinkered notion is what encourages studios to release certain films during awards season, which tends to run from October to December, and to spend millions of dollars on “for your consideration” campaigns. It’s what helps influential precursor awards such as the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs pick certain films for nominations, anointing them as favorites and nudging Academy voters toward them. The Irishman and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood were two of my favorite films of the year, and got 20 nominations between them. But these stories of masculinity and brutality—burnished by their filmmakers’ legacies—shouldn’t be the types of works most celebrated by Oscar voters year after year.

Academy members themselves have the power to expand what kinds of movies are considered Oscar contenders. One step would be to reject the preemptive hand-waving doled out to so many acclaimed films, many of them artsier or smaller-scale, that supposedly will never play with Oscar voters for little reason other than tradition. Think of Jordan Peele’s Us, which won several critical awards for Lupita Nyong’o’s dual performance but was overlooked by the Academy. Or Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, a mostly Chinese-language family drama that was rapturously received and financially successful, but was disregarded even for Best Screenplay (where the sparsely written war drama 1917 took a spot). Or Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers, an R-rated drama that managed to become a genuine box-office smash, which couldn’t muster a nod for its much-awarded supporting actor Jennifer Lopez. You might notice that these films happen to feature women and people of color both in front of and behind the camera; indeed, recognizing a fuller spectrum of excellent cinema is just one way to organically diversify the Oscar nominees.

Many of the best-received films of the year that supposedly had no chance in major categories were comedies (Booksmart, Dolemite Is My Name), horror films (Midsommar, The Lighthouse), or foreign-language films (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Transit), all categories that the Academy tends to overlook for the bigger prizes, with few exceptions. Most were also released by their studios outside of the end-of-year window in which serious movies tend to surface. Gradually reforming this established system will also require efforts from outside the Academy: Major critics have to continue championing quality work they think might be overlooked; awards prognosticators shouldn’t reflexively exclude genre films from their predictions; and studios shouldn’t be afraid of promoting a broad array of movies with screenings, events, and advertising come Oscar season.