People within and outside of Hollywood have been talking about the need to tell more diverse stories, but that isn’t enough. Diversity in the most popular Hollywood films is just as bad as ever, according to a new report from the University of Southern California. Despite breakout successes with movies that do challenge the mold—like “Hidden Figures,” “Moonlight,” and “Wonder Woman”—the study found that white, straight men are still overrepresented in the film industry. From the Associated Press:
A new report from the Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, provided first to The Associated Press, finds that the representation of women, minorities, LGBT people, disabled characters in films remains largely unchanged from the previous year, despite the heightened and attention to diversity in Hollywood. At the bottom of the rung and most egregiously disproportionate to their U.S. demographics are women, Hispanics and disabled characters. Exclusion, the report says, is the norm in Hollywood, not the exception.
For nine years since 2007, USC has analyzed the demographic makeup of every speaking or named character from each year’s 100 highest-grossing films at the domestic box office (with the exception of 2011), as well as behind-the-camera employment for those films including directors, producers and composers.
While there have been more conversations about diversity in Hollywood, the writers of the report say that isn’t enough—media makers have to walk the walk to match all the talk that’s been happening. Fortunately, the authors of the report have some recommendations on how to fix this diversity problem:
USC has a number of recommendations for changes — including adding five female speaking parts to each top film (which would result in gender equity in just three years) and encouraging A-listers to implement equity clauses into their contracts. The organization is also available to studios and content creators looking for advice, understanding or even lists of working female directors to consider.
“Diversity is not just something that just happens,” said Katherine Pieper, a research scientist on the report. “It’s something you have to think about and aim for as an objective and achieve.”
Read the entire report here.