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Here’s Why Everyone Was Talking About ‘Inclusion Riders’ At The Oscars

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Actress Frances McDormand called for actors to include “inclusion riders” in their contracts during her Oscar acceptance speech, leaving many viewers to wonder what exactly that is.

At the end of her speech, McDormand told the crowd she would be leaving them with two words: “inclusion rider.” Several actors and actresses took to Twitter to explain what an “inclusion rider” is and how it works, after the term started trending on Twitter.

An inclusion rider is a clause an A-list Hollywood actor can include in their contract requiring that the production companies make sure there is adequate gender and racial equality when hiring for movie sets.

an inclusion rider is something actors put into their contracts to ensure gender and racial equality in hiring on movie sets. We should support this for a billion reasons, but if you can’t find a reason to, here’s one: it will make movies better.

— Whitney Cummings (@WhitneyCummings) March 5, 2018

An “inclusion rider” is a clause in an actor’s contract that requires the cast and crew be diverse in order to retain the actor. That’s kind of a brave thing to say on such a big stage.

— Phillip Atiba Goff (@DrPhilGoff) March 5, 2018

The idea for the clause was first proposed by Annenberg Inclusion Initiative founder Stacy Smith, a University of Southern California professor who suggested that actors and actresses could help solve the lack of inclusion in Hollywood if they added the clause.

“An equity rider by an A-lister in their contract can stipulate that those roles reflect the world in which we actually live,” Smith said during a 2016 TED Talk. “Now, there’s no reason why a network, a studio or a production company cannot adopt the same contractual language in their negotiation processes.”

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