Since 2011, when the current era of the Oscars officially began—after the Academy changed its rules to allow up to 10 best-picture contenders each year—film’s most prestigious awards ceremony has nominated 30 best-actress performances and 30 best-actor performances. But just beyond that (mandated) equality lies a huge disparity: while 21 of those best-actor performances came in films that were also nominated for best picture, only 12 best-actress performances came from best-picture nominees. In other words, if the trend holds, a film nominated for best actor is 75 percent more likely to get a best-picture nomination than one nominated for best actress.

At a basic level, this implies two possible conclusions: either films with outstanding female lead performances actually aren’t as good (on average) as films with outstanding male lead performances, or there’s an unfair perception among Academy voters that this is the case.

This discrepancy isn’t just an issue of small sample size, either. At the 2010 and 2011 Oscars—the only two years since the 1944 awards ceremony that featured 10 best-picture nominees—best picture was equally represented among both the best-actor and best-actress categories. But for the 20 years before that, only 24 percent of best-actress nominees came from best-picture contenders, while 47 percent of best-actor nominees did.

If you subscribe to the idea that most movies yielding best-actress nominations just aren’t quite good enough to be nominated for best picture, your best supporting evidence is to look at the films made by top directors—and then emphatically throw shade at how few of them star women in the first place. Since 2000, 23 directors have made more than one film nominated for best picture; for the sake of argument, let’s say these are the 23 best contemporary filmmakers. Here they are, in alphabetical order along with two numbers accompanying each name: how many feature films they’ve made since 2000, and how many of those films had a woman in a lead role.

Kathryn Bigelow (5 features, 2 with female leads)

(5 features, 2 with female leads) Danny Boyle (9 features, 1 with a female lead)

(9 features, 1 with a female lead) Damien Chazelle (3 features, 2 with female leads)

(3 features, 2 with female leads) Joel & Ethan Coen (10 features, 1 with a female lead)

& (10 features, 1 with a female lead) Stephen Daldry (5 features, 2 with female leads)

(5 features, 2 with female leads) Clint Eastwood (14 features, 2 with female leads)

(14 features, 2 with female leads) David Fincher (6 features, 4 with female leads)

(6 features, 4 with female leads) Stephen Frears (12 features, 9 with female leads)

(12 features, 9 with female leads) Tom Hooper (5 features, 1 with a female lead)

(5 features, 1 with a female lead) Ron Howard (11 features, 1 with a female lead)

(11 features, 1 with a female lead) Alejandro G. Iñárritu (6 features, 1 with a female lead)

(6 features, 1 with a female lead) Peter Jackson (8 features, 2 with female leads)

(8 features, 2 with female leads) Ang Lee (7 features, 2 with female leads)

(7 features, 2 with female leads) Bennett Miller (3 features, 0 with female leads)

(3 features, 0 with female leads) Alexander Payne (5 features, 0 with female leads)

(5 features, 0 with female leads) Jason Reitman (6 features, 3 with female leads)

(6 features, 3 with female leads) David O. Russell (5 features, 3 with female leads)

(5 features, 3 with female leads) Martin Scorsese (7 features, 0 with female leads)

(7 features, 0 with female leads) Ridley Scott (14 features, 2 with female leads)

(14 features, 2 with female leads) Steven Soderbergh (19 features, 3 with female leads)

(19 features, 3 with female leads) Steven Spielberg (12 features, 1 with a female lead)

(12 features, 1 with a female lead) Quentin Tarantino (6 features, 2 with female leads)

Now, I know what you’re thinking: this is what retirement looks like to Steven Soderbergh? I agree, he’s a treasure—but stay with me here. These numbers are staggering: out of the 178 features made this century by these top filmmakers, only 44 had a female lead. And the number is only that high because Stephen Frears keeps making movies with old British Dames.

Obviously, this method isn’t a perfect measure. For one, a significant number of these films are ensemble pieces that don’t have any lead roles, male or female. The list is also missing several directors that have only made a single best-picture nominee so far, including people like Denis Villeneuve, Alfonso Cuarón, and Jean-Marc Vallée—all of whom have also made powerful films about women. (Also, none of those men are American; you can decide for yourself whether that’s coincidence or not.)

Still, this is a telling clarification of the best-actress discrepancy—the best directors simply aren’t making many movies starring women, probably because historically, Hollywood has proven itself to be uninterested in telling stories about women, or even, in many cases giving them speaking roles. Perhaps some of these directors wanted to make more films about women, and were shut down by studios—but the industry power wielded by many of them suggests that if they had really tried to make more films about women, they would have succeeded.

From top, from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty Images, from Weinstein Company/Everett Collection, from Sony Pictures Classics/Everett Collection.

This list of filmmakers, of course, contains 22 men and 1 woman. The Academy, as we all know, is also heavily male—just 28 percent of members are women, according to Variety, though this number has been steadily increasing since 2015. Perhaps this is why movies starring women aren’t always perceived as best-picture material. For example: did you know that while Thelma & Louise was nominated for best director, actress (times two), screenplay, cinematography, and editing—in other words, every best-picture bellwether category—it still didn’t manage to get a best-picture nod in 1992? Basically the same thing happened to Carol in 2016—another film about two women discovering their zest for life by getting the hell away from men.

Carol brings up another key issue in the best-actress predicament: category fraud, the term for what happens when a performer in a lead role campaigns for a supporting Oscar (often at the insistence of the film’s marketing team), theoretically increasing their chances of ultimately winning a statuette. Oscar pundits frequently debate category fraud, but they rarely point out how it disproportionately afflicts women. Recent Oscar-friendly films Carol, Fences, and The Danish Girl—each of which focuses on two halves of a couple, both of whom get relatively equal screen time—all campaigned a female lead for a supporting Oscar, and two of the three were successful in winning that Oscar. But those victories carried the unintentional consequence of diminishing what those women meant to their films—implying that one half of each lead couple actually mattered a little less.

In some years, the Academy struggles to even find five women to nominate for best actress. In the last 25 years, nine best-actress nominees have come from foreign-language films, compared to only three best-actor nominees. I don’t mean to diminish those nine performances—but it’s no accident that this happens to women three times more often than men, simply because American films have so few great roles for women. The latest instance was Isabelle Huppert’s nomination for Elle—an unforgettable film about a woman’s response to being raped, but one that wasn’t even shortlisted for the best foreign-language film Oscar. The Academy recognized her performance, but not the merits of the film itself, further emphasizing the problems inherent to a voting body without enough gender diversity.

Though the situation may appear to be improving with time, the data doesn’t actually bear that out. The number of best-actress nominees who give their performances in best-picture nominees has gone up since the 2010 awards ceremony—but only in roughly equal proportion to the increased number of best-picture nominees. And the gap between Oscar winners in these two categories is even worse than the gap between nominees. Since WWII, the Oscars for best picture and best actress have only gone to the same film seven times. But the Oscars for best picture and best actor have gone to the same film 25 times. In other words: if a film wins the best-actor Oscar, it’s more likely to also win best picture than if it wins best actress.

That said, the upcoming Oscars may be a turning point. The Academy has made strides in the last two years to increase its female membership, and the list of potential nominees features a number of best-picture and best-actress contenders with significant overlap. Lady Bird, The Shape of Water, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri could all find themselves nominated in both categories.

But if they don’t—if any of these powerful movies about women get snubbed for best picture, or the women that anchor them get left out of the best-actress race in favor of films that won’t make a dent in any other category (I see you, Victoria & Abdul)—it might be time for a serious intervention. Even after the expulsion of Harvey Weinstein, the Oscars can’t paint themselves as truly progressive if they only honor women in the categories where they have no other choice.