What is an Inclusion Rider?
An “inclusion rider” is a clause attached to an actor’s contract that makes stipulations about the diversity of the cast and the crew, in order to retain the actor services. It is essentially a contractual obligation that need to be adhered to by the company making the production – and it should ensure that diverse hiring in the film and TV projects they work on is guaranteed.

How Does It Work?
The idea was first coined by Stacey Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California at her TedTalk, as she spoke about the positive outcomes that come from this method. She believed it could be a way to tackle Hollywood’s diversity problems, by removing the conscious/unconscious bias that people face in auditions, interviews and hiring processes.

This change in attitude is just an extension of other movements calling for change, such as #TimesUp and #MeToo, which have taken Hollywood by storm. The industry has become more self-aware of its shortcomings and is doing a lot more to address and overcome them. Inclusivity is at the forefront of this conversation, and if stars actually used inclusion riders as a backdoor to tackle the lack of equality on set it, could make a huge difference to how the industry operates.

Jessica Chastain used her privilege to help Octavia Spencer negotiate a salary that was 5 times more than she asked for, and she did this by tying their salaries together. This highlighted the issue of pay-gap between Women-of-Colour and their white counterparts.

All it takes is one person at a more advanced stage of their career to demand that their co-workers are treated fairly, and that those who are often misrepresented are included.

Stars such as; Michael B Jordan, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have all publicly stated they would be adding inclusions riders to all their future projects from their respectable production companies.