Mary Beth Yeary.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science just opened a major diversity floodgate on Sept. 8. 

As part of its “Academy Aperture 2025” initiative to make movies that more reflect the makeup of the movie-going public, the Academy changed the rules of eligibility for the Best Picture Category at the Oscars. 

Starting with the 94th Oscars in 2022, new Academy representation and inclusion standards form must be submitted for a film to be considered for Best Picture, but it won’t be until 2024 until these requirements are absolutely required.

These new representation and inclusion standards have many criteria for diversity, including not just diverse racial representation, but also representation for people with disabilities and the LGBTQ+ community.

They include things like having at least one of the leading actors or signification supporting actors be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, having at least 30% of all actors in secondary and more minors roles being from underrepresented groups and having creative leadership positions and department heads — including directors, producers writers and casting directors — be from an underrepresented group.

Paid apprenticeships, internships, training and skills development opportunities must also have appropriate diversities and well as on marketing, publicity and distribution teams.

These are all part of four standards, two of which must be met in order for a film to be considered for Best Picture when the 2024 Oscars roll around. 

This new standard will no doubt change the films we start to see on our screens. For example, every person, regardless of their skin color, now has a better chance to be represented.

No doubt the recent rise of racial diversity in films like “Black Panther” and “Parasite” guided the formation of these guidelines, as well as our culture’s dialogue on racial representation and equality. It cannot be stressed enough how important this will be for getting different viewpoints, different experiences, different lives on the screen. 

However, as I read down the list of criteria, one thing struck me more than anything. Or, to be precise, one word.

Women.

All the standards include women as an underrepresented group. It’s been 100 years since we’ve been allowed to vote universally in the United States, yet the Academy still needs to make sure women get our say in the filmmaking process. And although we have plenty of actresses on screen (the standards for lead and significant supporting roles is the only category not to list gender), it’s in the actual process where I think making sure women get represented counts. 

One of the criteria of the standard for on-screen representation, theme and narratives deal may be met by making storylines, themes or narratives centered on women. In the creative leadership and project team standard for overall crew composition, 30% of the crew must be from the underrepresented groups, including women.

The standards also should allow for more women to be considered for film positions like directors, producers, writers and in-house senior executives in studios and film companies.

Having these perspectives, especially the perspective of women of different races, will hopefully lead to a more balanced film industry.

Getting a bit honest here, I am a curvy woman with a rounder physique. Until the likes of Melissa McCarthy, Rebel Wilson and Olivia Spencer, I never really felt represented on screen, without having the overweight women constantly being the butt of a joke.

I’m also a single woman with no immediate plans to get married or have children. I feel like stories like mine don’t make it to the screen that often. I can’t imagine what other women from more underrepresented groups must feel as they feel like they don’t have people like them on the silver screen.

If art is a lens on life, you can start to feel unimportant when you don’t have a hero to root for or a person in art that reflects your struggles. Since this decision also affects the casting director, diversity in cast also should increase.

To give a little more perspective of why this is important, the first woman to win Best Director was Kathyrn Bigleow in 2010 for “The Hurt Locker.” A woman would not be nominated again until 2017 when Greta Gerwig was nominated for “Lady Bird” and a woman has not been nominated since.

Before Bigelow and Gerwig, only three other women had ever been nominated for the award. Only one woman has ever been nominated for Best Cinematography (Rachel Morrison for “Mudbound”). On a brighter note, women have been producers for 99 films nominated for Best Picture, with eight of the nine films nominated last year (including winner “Parasite”) having a woman as a producer. It would be nice to see those kind of numbers shift over to Best Director and beyond.

Hopefully, this change will not only open the doors to making sure women are perfectly welcomed and recognized in all production roles, but also that they get paid equally for it as well, along with equal pay across races. 

Having more women’s voices in each part of the film industry means our different stories, no matter what type of women we are, get told in a more authentic way.

Mary Beth Yeary designs pages for The Valdosta Daily Times, The Tifton Gazette and The Moultrie Observer. She lives and works in Valdosta.