Hollywood isn’t getting more diverse, according to a report released Tuesday by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.
White, straight, able-bodied men are the most visible group to appear in popular films and mostly make up those who work behind the camera, per The Associated Press.
The Inclusion Initiative’s report detailed that around 30 percent of speaking roles in the top 100 movies of 2017 have gone to women and the figure hasn’t changed much in the last decade.
“It was an unprecedented year where you had the top spots at the domestic box office driven by female leads, and yet we find ourselves in another year where almost nothing has changed,” Dr. Stacy L. Smith, founding director of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, told The AP. “In the aggregate, Hollywood isn’t embracing any solution. It’s business as usual or embracing the status quo as usual.”
Women of color fare worse in what the report calls an “epidemic of invisibility.” Last year, 43 of the top 100 films did not have Black women, 64 didn’t feature any Latina women and 65 did not have a single Asian woman.
“As Time’s Up focuses on safety, equity and dignity, we need to be looking to 2019 and 2020 for the major changes where Time’s Up exerts its influence and we see a shift in hiring practices for the first time,” Smith said. “Until hiring changes, these numbers will not move.”
