Equal or not, some roles are really only playable by women, and vice versa. Whereas a female director could do as good a job as a male, some actresses could easily portray a better woman than most men.

It doesn't bother me too much. If you have both genders competing for the same award, you'll inevitably have a scenario where more men are being nominated than women. So what do you do then? You change the rules so that there has to be an equal number of male and female nominees. Basically, you have the same thing that you have now.

If there's a problem with the Best Actress category, it's the types of performances which get nominated. You see it all the time. Best Actor is filled with powerful, moving performances, capital-A Acting type stuff. This year you'll get Chiwetel Ejiofor, Robert Redford, Bruce Dern, maybe Tom Hanks. Best Actress, though? It's always stuff that's more showy than subtle. You know who's not going to be nominated for Best Actress this year? Brie Larson. Adele Exarchopoulos. Greta Gerwig. Margot Robbie. The women who actually gave fantastic performances. You know who probably will be nominated? Meryl Streep, for wearing a wig and shouting. Cate Blanchett, for being neurotic and loud. Sandra Bullock, for screaming and being scared. These aren't bad performances. They're very good, actually. But the Academy, for reasons that are beyond me, rarely nominates women who give thoughtful, subtle, passionate, affecting performances, in favor of women who give Big Performances. Not that they don't do this for actors too, but it's much more apparent in Best Actress.