At the end of her acceptance speech for best actress at the 90th annual Academy Awards in 2018, Frances McDormand said, “I have two words for you: inclusion rider.”
That phrase, which puzzled many viewers at the time, is now part of the lexicon of scholarly research, including a recent UCLA study, which found that “current status quo approaches to addressing the entertainment industry’s diversity problem have failed to move the needle in any significant way.”
Titled “By All M.E.A.N.S. Necessary: Essential Practices for Transforming Hollywood Diversity and Inclusion,” the report is based on an analysis of current inclusion and diversity programs at Hollywood studios, agencies and other companies as well as interviews of 21 entertainment industry leaders. The research was conducted by the UCLA Division of Social Sciences professors Drs. Darnell Hunt, Ana-Christina Ramón and J Shim.
The researchers developed a model called M.E.A.N.S., which stands for MODERNIZE your worldview to reflect changing U.S. demographics; EXPAND the net in routine talent searches; AMPLIFY the voices of women, especially women of color, within organizations; NORMALIZE compensation practices to reduce barriers to entry for marginalized groups; and STRUCTURE incentives for decision makers to prioritize diversity and inclusion.
For the last six years the UCLA team of social scientists has issued annual updates known as the Hollywood Diversity Report. “That report is like an almanac full or numbers—every TV show, ratings, top movies, box office and how all of that relates to diversity,” said Hunt, the lead author of the report, dean of the social sciences division and professor of sociology.
“This study is an attempt to say, ‘we’ve done this research for the last six years so let’s pull together all the accumulated knowledge that we’ve developed,’” Hunt added.
“So we thought that an important intervention we could make was by pulling together in one place all the strategies that seemed to be making a difference and arguing that if you’re really serious about diversity in Hollywood you need to be employing all of these strategies together, which is where the title of the report comes from — by all means necessary—if you want to see real, sustainable change,” Hunt explained.
