Is An Inclusion Rider Enough To Fix Hollywood’s Diversity Problem?

One of the most talked-about moments at this year’s Oscars was down to best actress winner Frances McDormand.

As we all know too well, the conversation around 2018’s award season has largely been that of gender equality and standing in solidarity against Hollywood’s culture of sexual harassment. The talk of earlier awards was dominated by black dress protests, Time’s Uppins or the wearing of white roses. At the Oscar’s however, there was no such organized statement or protest.

Ahead of the ceremony, the official Time’s Up Instagram account posted a picture to confirm that supporters of the movement would be moving away from the black dress code that dominated the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs. ‘Tonight, our sisters will be wearing a festive array of colors and Times Up pins, representing this vast movement of women everywhere’, the caption read. But that’s not to say that the 90th Academy Awards was without an enduring statement of solidarity.

When McDormand took to the stage to accept an award for her performance in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, after thanking everyone for her award, she asked all of the women in the room – actresses, crew members, directors and so on – to stand with her.

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‘If I may be so honoured to have all the female nominees in every category stand with me in this room tonight’, she said. ‘The actors - Meryl, if you do it, everybody else will, c'mon - the filmmakers, the producers, the directors, the writers, the cinematographer, the composers, the songwriters, the designers. C'mon!’

McDormand continued: ‘Okay, look around everybody. Look around, ladies and gentlemen, because we all have stories to tell and projects we need financed. Don't talk to us about it at the parties tonight. Invite us into your office in a couple days, or you can come to ours, whatever suits you best, and we'll tell you all about them.’

It was pretty incredible. But perhaps the most poignant part of her speech was the very last thing she said: ‘I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentlemen: inclusion rider’.

What is an inclusion rider?

Those two words made a resounding impression. An inclusion rider is kind of like a prerequisite that actors can implement before signing onto a job. It requires the cast and crew of a film to meet a specified level of diversity. Kind of like a representation prenup.

It’s not a brand new concept, though. Speaking backstage after the awards McDormand explained that she'd only heard about inclusion riders a week or so ago. She said it means 'you can ask for and/or demand at least 50 percent diversity in not only the casting but also the crew. And so, the fact that I just learned about that after 35 years of being in the film business, we're not going back'.

Who created inclusion riders?

It was proposed as part of the solution to Hollywood’s poor representation in a TED Talk by Stacy Smith, founder of Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California. Smith researches gender equality in film and television and explained that an inclusion rider would typically set benchmarks for staffing with the intention of making sure ‘the world onscreen looks like the world in which we live’.

Will inclusion riders make a difference?

It's really hard to say given the fact that it's only really been introduced to the wider conversation in a big way as of Sunday night. But in theory, it could make a real difference to representation. That's the point. And I think its merit is in how practical and seemingly straight forward to introduce it would be. All it would take for a few really high profile people with sizable influence in Hollywood to use an inclusion rider to start to see things change both on and off screen.

'We could see the numbers onscreen and behind the camera jump if it was adopted by some of the most powerful people in Hollywood', Smith told theNew York Times.

A big part of using an inclusion rider is also that failure to meet the requirements set out could result in the studio or distributor having to pay a fee and as depressing as it is that these things need a monetary incentive (or consequence depending which way you look at it), the potential financial implications probably make compliance more likely. But the fact of the matter is, it just depends how willing Hollywood's A-list are to implement something that has been around (and largely unused) for a while. Yes, studios and production companies could decline these riders, but the positive thing is that it places accountability at the forefront and leaves little room for excuses when the diversity numbers are as low as they are now.

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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.