The data revealed gender parity and proportional representation of black cast members, but the streamer says he needs to do a better job to include other communities, including Latinos, MENA, indigenous, LGBTQ and people with disabilities.
Last month, Netflix unveiled its first inclusion report, a qualitative summary of what the company is doing to diversify its workforce and create a more inclusive work culture. Now, the streamer has extended its commitment to inclusion – and transparency – by analyzing the diversity of its content and making these results public.
To this end, Netflix hired the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, a leader in this space, to analyze all original content with a US-based live action script released in 2018 and 2019, using the same rigorous examination protocols that AII applies to its inclusion studies in the entertainment industry. (Last week, Starz partnered with the UCLA Center for Scholars & Storytellers to order a similar study of its own programming as part of its new inclusion initiative #TakeTheLead.) Netflix’s partnership with USC Annenberg is a long-term one. ; IIA will release a report on Netflix’s original content every two years until 2026.
“An internal audit is a critical first step towards inclusive change,” said IIA founder Dr. Stacy L. Smith, according to a blog post by Netflix co-CEO and content director Ted Sarandos, announcing the results of the report.
The study, “Inclusion in Netflix Original US Scripted Series and Films”, analyzed the representation of gender, race / ethnicity, LGBTQ and disability status both on screen and in the roles of director, writer and producer and compared Netflix’s performance with numbers of the real-world population as well as, where possible, data from contemporary highest-grossing or industry averages for series. In a symposium held to discuss the study’s findings the day before its release, Netflix’s vice president of global film, Scott Stuber, agreed with moderator Elvis Mitchell that the streamer faces fewer external obstacles to inclusion because he doesn’t have to deal with exhibitors. “Our distribution platform is definitely an advantage because it is an equalizer,” he said. “You are going directly to the public, who know you are diverse.”
Among the 126 films and 180 series analyzed, the main conclusions of the report include:
Gender parity in leads or co-leads, with a jump in protagonists with female identification from 48.6% to 55.2% from 2018 to 2019. But when it came to populating the rest of the screen world, Netflix regressed to industry averages, with just under 40% of characters with lines identifying themselves as women (15% as women of color). Stuber found this result particularly worrying, since dialogue can significantly impact the career of an emerging artist: “This SAG card is everything. This insurance is the beginning of a dream, and [could lead to] the next great artist. “Women tended to work in key roles behind the camera for Netflix at a higher rate than the industry average, but in no position did they represent more than a third of the people in these jobs.
Netflix’s non-white screen representation grew from 2018 to 2019 and surpassed industry averages, but whites still dominate in front and behind the cameras. Divided by specific race / ethnicity, 15.2% of Netflix’s original content featured black protagonists or co-protagonists, and nearly 20% of all members of the main cast in films and series were black. The other racial / ethnic groups were represented in single-digit proportions: 2.6% of the content featured Latin principals or co-leaders (Latin actors represented 4.5% of the entire main cast), 4% of the content starred Asian protagonists ( 7% of Netflix’s main cast members were Asian) and there were only seven pieces of original content in two years that featured protagonists or co-protagonists from the Middle East / North Africa (MENA), Native American or Native Hawaiian / communities Pacific Islander (NHPI).
Among Netflix’s film directors, 9.2% were black (nine men and three women), 3.1% were Asians, 1.5% were MENA and one person was Latin. On scripted television, 6.5% of the program’s creators were black, 2.6% were Latino, 1.5% were Asian and 1.9% were MENA.
AII researchers noted that projects led by black creatives were much more likely to yield more black leads and other characters. Presumably, the scarcity of the main Latin, Asian, MENA, natives and NHPI creators behind the scenes may be linked to their respective under-representation on the screen.
“When you have people of color in the room expressing their opinions, objecting, complaining and celebrating, it changes the texture of what you see [onscreen], “said George C. Wolfe, director of Netflix Black Bottom by Ma Rainey, at the symposium. “Diversity has to be a holistic attack. Without it, people are afraid to make decisions because they don’t want to make the wrong decisions, so they end up not making decisions.”
Alan Yang, whose Netflix projects include Master of None, Tigertail and Min Jin Lee’s next adaptation Free food for millionaires, added that black communities can cooperate to increase their impact. “We need to take care of each other, and this is important for the POC communities,” he said, adding that, as an example, he recently approached Charles King’s media company, MACRO, for a list of Latin writers for the team.
LGBTQ characters are significantly underrepresented. At the symposium, the vice president of Netflix for the global series Bela Bajaria admitted that she was shocked by the company’s poor performance in this area: “I feel that we are very active with stories and great impact, so I was shocked that we were not doing very well. Dr. Smith knows, I almost fell off my chair. “While the streamer’s numbers are in line with LGBTQ representation across the industry, the Netflix study does not give a pass. At the symposium, LGBTQ people represent 12% of the U.S. population, but 2.3% of Netflix’s original content featured leads or co-leads from the community (17 characters in total, more than half of them identified by women, 29.4% not white and more bisexual). The study delves deeply into intersectionality, breaking down LGBTQ representation by sexual orientation, gender identity, race / ethnicity and age – and even points out that only 11 members of the main LGBTQ cast have been described as parents. “This detail was a great lesson for me, because that is not how the world looks,” added Bajaria.
Disabled characters are underrepresented and, when portrayed, are usually white, heterosexual, cisgendered men. According to the US Census, 27.2% of the population lives with a physical, communicative or cognitive disability, but only 5.3% of Netflix’s original content featured protagonists with disabilities – of those leads or co-leads, almost 65% were male, over 70% were white and only one was LGBTQ. As with the analyzes of the other marginalized groups, when it comes to more casual references of inclusion (members of the main cast, speaking characters), the proportion of PCD was even lower, at 4.7% and 2.1%, respectively .
In addition to launching statistical deepening into its own content, Netflix also unveiled the creation of the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity, which will see the company invest $ 100 million over five years in internal programs and external organizations to develop underrepresented talent for careers in the film and television industries. “Doing better means establishing even more opportunities for people in underrepresented communities to have their voices heard,” wrote Sarandos, “and purposefully closing the gaps in capacity and skill with training programs where they are needed.”