Speaking at the third Global Symposium on Gender in Media, and the first outside the U.S., presented by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in association with the BFI and Women in Film and Television (WFTV), Davis drew particular attention to the representation of women and girls in children’s programming where male characters out-number females three-to-one.
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To be perfectly honest, I don’t know who Geena Davis is, but I love talking about the dichotomy between men and women in society, and she makes a striking point in this article when she says: “We are unwittingly training generation after generation to see men and women as unequal.” Which is striking for one main reason: we have been and ARE WILLINGLY teaching boys and girls that they are and have been unequal for centuries! Med schools have disregarded the female body as extraneous and different, and established the male body and its functions as standard and normal. Women were thought as vessel for children, a means of getting new life into the world, and while that opinion disappeared for about a century, it is coming back in the modern world with the severe opinions surrounding abortion and saving the life of fetus vs. child. Women have been kept alive synthetically until their unborn child comes to term and can be surgically removed and go on to live its life. Men and women are perpetually taught that they are to be unequal. In order for art to change, the world must change.
Yes. Three cheers for Geena Davis and for Kim's comment above. As time goes on, we as a society look more and more to media such as television to define our lives, especially as children. In their developmental stages, children often take what they see as truth, and do their best to put boy and girl qualities into schemas that define them based off what they see. When children watch television shows where boys outnumber girls three to one, they are always going to believe that little girls are a minority. Boys will always be the "normal" thing, and girls will always be the "extra" thing. I love what Davis says in this article, “I want reaching parity in films to seem fun and easy and creative. Give female characters more to do, more to say, greater aspirations … give them more clothes,” PLEASE GIVE FEMALE CHARACTERS MORE TO DO AND SAY! I personally am so tired of seeing a tv show or a movie or a play or a music video or whatever where yes, there are women, but no, they really don't contribute anything other than a love story or a petty obstacle. It happens all the time, and in children's shows too, which is scary. The earlier we teach girls that they are supporting characters and not the leads, the more they are going to embody this in their lives. Let's get more women doing more things in different forms of entertainment, please.
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