Female empowerment movies are in fact important in many ways (and this film will open doors for future films likely which is a good thing), but at some point the Paul Fieg style of empowering women by making men bad or weak turns off a segment of the population, and probably alienated some male academy voters who kept Gerwig and Robbie out. There wasn't a single good male figure in the movie, they were all bad or ineffectual.
They could make the final ten for best picture with the votes they had, but not the lower cutoffs in the individual categories.
The male films took decades to evolve to the point where women had meaningful and complex roles, that's the next step for films like this.
Jmo.