Inside the Academy’s Inclusion Drive
Now that AMPAS has surpassed its goal of doubling its women and members of color, the group keeps pushing. The Hollywood Reporter dug into the data to see which branches have achieved parity and which have more work to do.
Even after that change, and after another year of invitees in 2021 that continued the trend, the Academy still stands at 81 percent white and 67 percent male.
As the THR analysis of the 17 voting branches shows, the gains have been uneven, among the crafts in particular.
The Academy’s 2016 inclusion initiative, called A2020, dramatically grew the size of the organization, a trend that has now ended.
After historically inviting classes of 200 to 300 members, Academy class sizes doubled and tripled during the push to A2020 and the group, which had 5,765 total voting members in 2012, ballooned to 9,487 total voting members by 2021 — a growth of over 64.6 percent.
With A2020 complete, the class size dropped back down in 2021 to 375. But the Academy largely continued the demographic patterns it had set under A2020: 2021’s class was roughly 37 percent nonwhite and 46.1 percent female.
Throughout the A2020 drive, the organization struggled with being at the end of the industry’s pipeline. Who ultimately becomes an Oscar nominee is not just up to Academy members, but is also the product of decisions made by film schools’ admissions departments, agents, producers and studio executives.
Aperture 2025
To tackle that issue, the Academy has created a new initiative, Aperture 2025, which will attempt to use Oscar eligibility to encourage more inclusion at those earlier stages.
These new guidelines, which will require films to meet diversity standards among cast and crew to be eligible for best picture nomination, are planned to take effect by the 96th Oscars, in 2024.
