Cate Blanchett prefers being called an actor. As she explained, “I have always referred to myself as an actor. I am of the generation where the word actress was used almost always in a pejorative sense. So I claim the other space.”
Echoing Ms. Blanchett, the
NY Times asked people in the entertainment
industry about eliminating gendered categories for awards. In 2021 the Gotham Awards said yes. However, when the Brit Awards (British equivalent of the Grammys) also made the decision, they nominated no women.
Asked for an opinion, one actor supported people who do not want to be defined by gender but then added, “… until women and nonbinary performers are afforded ‘as much screen time as the men, it’s not very fair to compare the performances.’”
How does screen time compare? Let’s take a look at research from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.
Academy Award Diversity
We can start with 2018. When Frances McDormand accepted the Best Actress award, she concluded by referring to the inclusion rider. Misleadingly simple sounding, the phrase is a contractual promise. Its goal is more diversity in the film industry. Getting there though requires the institutional upheaval that ranges from demographic databases to day-to-day processes.
Shown by the following numbers, doing it right takes awhile.
Since 2015 underrepresented nominees more than doubled from 8 percent to 17 percent. But still, you can see below that since 1929, just 16 percent of Oscar winners were women:
Thinking of this year’s best movie (and winner of seven awards) Everything Everywhere All at Once takes us to Asian nominees. By contrast, the Inclusion Initiative’s data display the exclusion of Asians at the Academy Awards. Ranging from just two Asian nominees during the past 95 years to 23 percent of all Asian winners being named in 2020 and 2021, the results are sparse.
Correspondingly, for Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Middle Eastern/North African and Indigenous winners and nominees, the numbers are comparably low.
Our Bottom Line: Expectations Bias
Behavioral economists suggest that what we expect shapes what see and do. Very similar to demonstrating a confirmation bias, our beliefs affect our opinions. As a result, when an industry is dominated by men, many of us expect to see men. Research has confirmed that we hire them and select them for key roles.
How to change our expectations?
Maybe we should call everyone an actor.
My sources and more: For the research, do look at the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Next, we had the perfect complement from Cate Blanchett as was this HuffPost article. And finally, the NY Times dug into the non-gender awards debate.
