Powerful Women Who Won Big At The Academy Awards

When women hit the headlines throughout award season, we see much of the focus on the accolades won by incredible actresses.

At the 2025 Academy Awards, the big acting prizes were claimed by Mikey Madison who won Best Actress for “Anora” and Zoe Saldaña, who won Best Supporting Actress for Spanish-language musical “Emilia Pérez.” Both women won their first Academy Awards following their first ever nominations, the latter being the first woman of Dominican Origin to win an Oscar. 

As we kick off Women’s History Month, here is Her Agenda’s roundup of many incredible women you may not have been familiar with prior to their Academy Award wins.

The first recognized woman to win an Academy Award was Shirin Sohani, for Best Animated Short. Shirin is an Iranian woman who co-directed and co-wrote “In The Shadow of the Cypress,” and was granted her visa to attend the ceremony only the night before.

The short is her second credit as a director. According to IMDB, Shirin began her career as a storyboard artist.

Alongside Pierre-Olivier Persi, both Stéphanie Guillon and Marilyne Scarselli won for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for their work on body horror film, “The Substance.”

Deadline reported that the head of the hairstyling department on the movie, Frédérique Arguello, who was assisted by Scarselli, was controversially snubbed from the nomination and left out of their acceptance speech.

El Mal from “Emilia Pérez” was awarded Best Original Song. Part of a three person songwriting team, French songwriter Camille collected the award, saying in her speech that the song was written to speak out against corruption with hope that music continues to be a “force of good and progress in the world.”

According to Variety, Camille has a music career spanning 20 years and has also lended her voice to animated films.

Director Molly O’Brien and her co-producer Lisa Remington won for “The Only Girl in the Orchestra,” a documentary about Molly’s aunt, Orin O’Brien. Recently retired, Orin was the first female musician in the New York Philharmonic, joining in 1966.

Molly is an Emmy Award-winning Documentary Producer. As noted by IMDB, Lisa is a Sundance Institute Documentary Fellow and has produced over two dozen documentaries. 

Part of a four person Palestinian-Israeli collective of filmmakers, Rachel Szor is an Israeli director, cinematographer and editor. Making her directorial debut as a co-director, on the winning documentary feature “No Other Land.”

The film is about the Israeli displacement of a Palestinian community.

Dutch Writer and Director Victoria Warmerdam won her award for the Dutch-language sci-fi short, “I’m Not a Robot,” a film distributed by The New Yorker, alongside her partner and producer of the film, Trent.

Victoria has many short film credits as both a writer and director.