Academy intends to double female and minority voters by 2020

“I want everybody to know and I want you to know that this organisation, the Academy, has been active for the last three, four years about including new and different voices – filmmakers, whether of gender or race or national origin – we want them at the table”, she said. Beginning later this year, each new member’s voting status will last 10 years, and will be renewed if the new member has been active in film during that decade.

At the same time, the academy said it would augment the traditional process by which current members sponsor newcomers to the organization by launching “an ambitious global campaign to identity and recruit qualified new members who represent greater diversity”. After this year’s awards, however, current members who don’t qualify for active status will be moved to “emeritus status”, which means they don’t pay dues or vote but otherwise “enjoy all the privileges of membership”.

African-American filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who many expected to score a Best Director nomination for Selma a year ago, is also pleased with the Academy’s new position on diversity issues.

You are also assuming that if a member hasn’t had a job in the industry for ten years, or has not received a nomination or an Award, such a member is also responsible for the lack of diversity in the Academy, as well as in the film Industry. “My wife and I, we made the decision, we’re not going to change our decision”.

The changes were approved in a unanimous vote by the Academy’s board of governors on Thursday, following days of criticism that for a second year in a row, all 20 actors nominated for Oscars were white. It’s time the Academy got its diversity act together.

Meanwhile, the producer of this year’s Academy Awards telecast has confirmed that Chris Rock will host the 28 February ceremony as planned.

Ever since the nominations for the 2016 Oscars were released, people have been arguing over the issue of lack of black nominated people, using #OscarsSoWhite to express their anger. “I’ve been a script doctor, character designer, and storyboard artist on three unproduced theatrical pictures”, Beiman, 58, wrote in her letter to the academy, noting she’s been a professional animator for 37 years.

“You can’t say that I am only concerned about my own backyard”.

The roster of the 6,000 or so academy members has never been publicly disclosed, though a 2012 Los Angeles Times study found its members were almost 94 percent white and 77 percent male. Shame is a helluva motivator … “But I’m glad there’s at least a first step”, he told Bustle.

The Academy’s pledge was a step in the right direction, but let’s hope it was just that: a first, baby step in a rapid and more aggressive march toward inclusion and diversity.