Taylor Swift has become the first solo female artist to win Best Director at the MTV Video Music Awards.

She won the accolade for her work on her music video for hit track The Man. The video sees Swift transform into a bearded man who urinates on walls, smashes rackets on a tennis court and manspreads on the subway.

“This is amazing. This is the very first video that I've ever directed on my own. I'm just so grateful for this. I want to take an opportunity to say thank you to the team who believed in me as a first-time director and made this video with me,” she said in her virtual acceptance speech.

“I was told that this was an industry-voted award. I want to say thank you to everyone in the industry who voted for this video. But I also really want to thank the fans because you are the only reason why the industry cares about anything that I do.”

Women have won the award previously but this was in collaboration with someone else. In 1996 Velerie Faris picked up the award with Jonathan Daynton for their work on the Smashing Pumpkins video ‘Tonight Tonight’.

While in 2008 Erykah Badu and Mr Roboto won the award for their video ‘Honey’ and in 2016 Melina Matsoukas claimed the title for her work on Beyonce’s Formation video.

The ceremony took place last night with performances being broadcast from multiple different places across New York.

Lady Gaga dominated as she collected four awards including Artist of the Year and Song of the Year for her collaboration track ‘Rain on Me’ with Ariana Grande.

Other winners included: The Weeknd who picked up Best Video for Blinding Lights, Dua Lipa who won Best Visual Affects for Physical and BTS who claimed Best Group.