a collage of the female directors and the films that got them Best Director nominations. Caption reads: 96 years (in yellow font), 8 women (in white)

In her 1993 speech at the Oscars, just before she presented the Academy Award for Best Director, Barbara Streisand envisioned a future in which women are so often in the leading filmmaking roles, that no special focus on their gender is necessary. Three decades later, we look at the history of the Best Director category to see how close, if at all, we have gotten to living in the future Streisand spoke about.