7 Problems with Inclusion Riders

I was among the many diversity- and representation specialists who watched Frances McDormand’s historical speech at the Oscars 2018 and, excitedly, heard of an Inclusion Rider for the first time. Meanwhile, I might be one of very few people in the field of representation, diversity and inclusion, to find the development problematic.

Frances McDormand acceptance speech, Oscars 2018, Credit: ABC/Craig Sjodin

Previously referred to as an equity rider, or even when adopted from sports, the ”Rooney rule”, the Inclusion Rider posits, that influential people like movie stars, film directors or “content creators”, can add a clause to their contracts, which requires diversity in hiring both behind the camera and on screen. Under its new name the Inclusion Rider has become the talk of the town and the new industry buzzword.

With studies documenting under-representation, particularly of minority groups defined by gender, sexuality, “race”, ethnicity, age and ability, the Inclusion Rider seems an easy and appealing solution to the problem of invisibility and erasure. One can read more about the measurements of representation from the Geena Davis Institute or the UCLA Annual Hollywood Diversity Report(s).

Adding to the Inclusion Riders appeal is the prominence and many years of research guiding Stacy L. Smith, the Associate Professor, Founder and Director of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and the main driver behind it. You can see her Ted talk here.

I am not going to lie — I was drawn to the idea at first. All too often people in my field research and document problems and inequalities in film, but neglect to think of change or solutions. Judging from articles and information I could find on her, Smith has decidedly dedicated her time and focus to spurring on research-based actions and has collaborated with legal experts and film professionals to come up with effective solutions. And the Inclusion Rider has lots of strengths. It allows influential industry professionals to leverage their power in order to set fixed requirements and effect immediate change. It also makes diversity an incorporated legal process rather than an opt-in voluntary and often tokenizing stunt. Furthermore, it stresses process rather than results, by emphasizing diversity in hiring and interviewing (it highlights interviewing diverse candidates as a goal in itself) and it is even openly available, making it a highly applicable tool. See the Inclusion Rider here.

With all of these advantages in mind, I see a handful of potential risks, challenges and problems on the horizon if Inclusion Riders get the kind of pick-up they look to be getting — especially if they are not immediately followed up with alternative solutions to tackle the qualitative industry diversity-challenges. By that I mean; Inclusion Riders solve one set of problems (like there are too few of a given group of people in film) but neglect to address a bunch of other problems (like how they are represented, and what they do on screen and behind the camera). As such, they might even create a whole new set of problems specifically to do with diversity.

It is not without pause, that I offer my critique of a solution brought forth by the “leading think tank in the world studying diversity and inclusion in entertainment (…)”, and I am still carefully approaching some of these questions in my research, so I have to stress that this is by no stretch a comprehensive analysis (it is a blog-post after all).

For now, I think it might be useful to raise some critical (killjoying) concerns:

Problem 1: It is not (necessarily) intersectional (enough)

Even though the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative works across categories (in that they both study diversity with regards to gender, sexuality, age, (dis)ability and “race”/ethnicity), the Inclusion Rider Template only refers to “under-represented group(s)” as “female-identifying, people of color, disabled, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender or Queer or having a combination of these attributes”. It does stress that the term is flexible and should be reviewed, but this grouping of categories under one umbrella-term might allow for the people editing the contract to only include some of the categories, or might allow for the studio that has to fulfill the contract to do so by only increasing diversity on one of the parameters. Additionally, I wonder which parameters decided the categories. Could one add categories like religion, body-type, class/social background, indigenous peoples or other groups that require specific protections from discrimination and under-representation?

Excerpt from the March 2018 Inclusion Rider Template

Problem 2: It is selective and personal

Problem number 1 leads to Problem 2. Because the language about under-represented groups is blurry and seems very much up for discussion in the contract, the interpretation seems like a subjective process. In write-ups about the Inclusion Rider, one of the positives people have stressed, is the option for influential actors, directors or those referred to in the rider as Content Creators, to select the type of diversity that matters to them, and limit the contractual obligations to that. For instance, a woman might have an inclusion-rider that only addresses (binary) gender diversity. Not only does that put the moral and ethics of the actor at the center of diversity-initiatives in the industry (allowing for bigger celebrities to set whatever agenda they deem important and overlook whichever they don’t, which might reproduce other inequalities) — it allows for selective and personal agendas to set policy and procedure standards for a highly influential industry. Furthermore, it might easily encourage hierarchizations among minority-groups (what has sometimes been referred to as oppression Olympics). Finally, these appeals of minority-groups would work to increase the power of celebrities — and as such, the Inclusion Rider is not decentralizing power (from studios) but recentralizing it (to celebrities and other industry power-players).

Problem 3: It becomes an excuse

If one assumes the worst about big film- and media-corporations, and therefore expects them to not have an interest in increasing diversity, minimizing stereotypes and nuancing perspectives, then one might think, that the Inclusion Rider is a forceful solution to make them take responsibility. However, following that assumption (that the corporations are not making efforts to be responsible on their own, and that they are big and bad), what is to stop them from using their newly acquired (albeit specific and not necessarily intersectional) diversity in this particular film, as an excuse for them not to do more comprehensive work to avoid discrimination and increase diversity. If we only expect them to meet the specific requirements subjectively decided by celebrities, will we overlook the structural and infrastructural systems already in place for them to be held to a much higher (or at least more comprehensive) standard like the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights? Does the Inclusion Rider count as being accountable?

Problem 4: It will only impact numbers

This is not really a problem of conception as much as it is a problem of practice, to be fair. Nonetheless, I wonder what the consequences are of the very quantitative approach the Inclusion Rider has to diversity. Much like in research, there is nothing wrong with quantitative approaches, they just sometimes fail to capture all the nuances. This might also be a risk in practice; if people only consider Inclusion Riders as their measure for diversity, they might overlook aspects like stereotypes, story and narrative. (The Blind Side and The Help both featured a relatively diverse casts, but still centered a stereotypical White Savior Narrative.) The Inclusion Rider might impact how many diverse people are asked to interview for, or even get hired in, a wide range of positions behind the camera and a narrower range of positions on screen. However, it might not impact the types of stories or characters that form the narratives — and it might not impact the most influential roles on set in terms of determining the outcome of films. For instance, a woman editor can’t do much about women’s screen-time, if all of the women in the film are always in the background anyway. Might there be a risk, that the increased diversity in cast and crew, be used to legitimize films which still feature oppressive or stereotypical narratives?

Problem 5: It could increase financial inequalities in the industry

Because the Inclusion Rider specifically aims at diversifying supporting roles, and mainly technical crew (note that script-writers, producers and directors are assumed to already be in place at this point) it is not an unlikely result of the clause, that the biggest increase in diversity will happen at the lowest level of influence (and income). As such, one might ask; if this is the way to increase numbers of minorities in film, will they enter, and potentially stay, at the lowest levels of the industry both in terms of impact, power and pay?

Problem 6: Stressing interviews does not (necessarily) counter bias in hiring

The Inclusion Rider attempts to solve the problem that there aren’t enough qualified applicants or interviewees for the jobs, rather than the problem of implicit or unconscious biases that recruiters might have. The rider requires that “underrepresented groups” be interviewed for a series of positions, but it allows for loopholes. To live up to the Inclusion Rider, the studio has to make “reasonable efforts” to fill the positions with “qualified and available individuals”. Even if the Studio actually manages to interview people of under-represented groups for all of the positions in question, whomever is responsible for interviewing will still have to make the (often subjective) evaluation of qualification and availability, which in a high-paced world like the film-industry might easily revert to what Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman calls “thinking fast” in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. If you need to make quick decisions on the spot, your biases are even more likely to affect your decision making. You get the point. The selection of choices doesn’t matter, if you already “know”, what “qualified” looks like.

Problem 7: It lacks transparency

In an effort to increase transparency and share knowledge about the impacts of the Rider, it actually includes a specific requirement of tracking and reporting. However, this tracking and reporting is supposed to be done with and for Stacy L. Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which means the data will be processed, evaluated, analyzed and potentially published by the same people who developed the Inclusion Rider to start with. This is basically like developing a tool and co-authoring all of the reviews for that tool in exchange for letting people use it. Not only does it privilege specific researchers and really limit the possibilities to improve or grow the Inclusion Rider to its full potential, it makes the process less transparent and the results more biased. With transparency in business it is important to respect businesses (and researchers) rights to protection of their ideas and their competitive advantage — but I wonder — is there an approach where reporting can become more transparent and where transparency might increase competitive advantage?

There are really many advantages with the Inclusion Rider, but as always, it might be worth it to stop and think about potential challenges as well, even if it kills the joy. If you made it all the way through thanks for sticking with the (long) read!

This blogpost originally appeared on Tess S. Skadegård Thorsens personal blog on Medium.

Data CultureOctober 3, 2019