And the Best Female Oscar goes to...

On Sunday night in LA, Autumn Durald Arkapaw 'made history' by winning the 2026 Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Paradoxically, by being the first woman to win in this 'gender-agnostic' category, she quietly punctured the notion that achievement needs to be parsed by gender. Arkapaw competed not as 'best woman cinematographer', but as best - full stop. This kind of 'un-prefixing' should percolate across other accolades, whether it be 'Best Writer', 'Best Businessperson' or 'Employee of the Month'.

Gender-specific awards, however well-intentioned, risk reinforcing the very divisions they seek to dismantle. They imply that women require a parallel track where excellence is measured differently. Arkapaw's triumph demonstrates the opposite: that women can - and do - excel in arenas where competition is universal. In finance, Jane Fraser's ascent to Citigroup CEO was not marked by a 'best female banker' tag. In science, Jennifer Doudna's 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry was not diluted by gender qualifiers. It was 'simply' a Nobel.

Even as a separate 'female' category can be seen as well-meant encouragement for women, the danger of separate awards is that they risk becoming consolation prizes, affirmations of effort rather than acknowledgments of supremacy. By contrast, Arkapaw's Oscar is a signal to Hollywood - and beyond - that the highest standards of craft are not gendered. The lens she wielded in Ryan Coogler's superb supernatural politico-thriller, Sinners, captured more than images; it reframed the narrative of segregation - in this case, along a racial line - itself. True equality is not achieved by creating parallel podiums but by ensuring competition is shared. This holds true as much for language, nation, race... as it does for gender.