| Formation | 2004 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Geena Davis |
| Type | Non-profit |
| Purpose | Equal representation of women in Hollywood films |
| Website | seejane |
The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media is a US non-profit research organization that researches gender representation in media and advocates for equal representation of women.
After watching children's TV with her young daughter, Geena Davis noticed that the large majority of these television shows and other media lacked a large number of female characters. [1] [2] [3] Davis sponsored research on this type of entertainment, conducted by Stacy L. Smith at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. One study by Smith found that three times as many males as females appeared in children's films while in children's television 1.67 males appeared for every 1 female. [4] Another research study from Smith's group showed that in G-rated films, characters in the workplace were 80.5% male and only 19.5% female. [5] [3] In other research sponsored by the Institute and conducted by Smith on 122 "G, PG, and PG-13 films theatrically-released between 2006 and 2009,” “only 29.2% of all speaking characters are female,” and these women are more sexualized than the men. [6] As “children are engaging with media up to 7–10 hours/day,” the representation of women in children's television shows and films has a major impact on how young girls believe they should act and how they view themselves. [3] Davis subsequently founded the eponymous Institute in 2004. [2]
The institute has engaged in several large scale research projects concerning the current conditions for women in mass media. In addition, the Institute collaborates with several other non-profits and for-profit corporations in order to highlight their feelings on the need to reform the way that women are represented in popular culture. [7]
In 2010, the institute, along with the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation, established a $5000 award for diversity in children's animation created by college students. [8]
In 2022, the institute was awarded the Governors Award by The Board of Governors of the Television Academy which recognizes an individual, company, or organization that has made a profound, transformational, and long-lasting contribution to the arts and/or science of television. [9]
The institute has teamed-up with several multi-national corporations to achieve their goal of informing media consumers about the current state of women in popular culture. Recently, the institute has partnered with Ford and several YouTube stars to create a video series entitled #ShesGotDrive. The partnership between Ford and the Institute seeks to highlight several stories of women content creators overcoming significant challenges. [10] The purpose of this campaign is to highlight the power of women in media and inspire other women to follow their dreams. In addition, the campaign seeks “to fight unconscious gender bias in media.” [10] The institute has also teamed up with the Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA) to create a program entitled Girls’ Fast Track Races. With this program, girls construct their own race cars. The program was created in order to foster learning of automobile engineering in young women. [11] Previously, in 2016, the Institute received a 1.2 million dollar grant from Google. Using this grant, the Institute developed the Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient (or GD-IQ). The GD-IQ is an algorithm that can quickly scan a feature-length film to detect gender differences in representation. The Institute believes that the GD-IQ will significantly improve the institute's research of on-screen gender disparities. [12]
In addition to its partnerships with several for-profit corporations, the institute has also partnered with a number of non-profit organizations in order to further the institute's goals. The institute has partnered with the United Nations; and founder Geena Davis is a chair on the California Commission on the Status of Women. [13]
The institute has completed several large studies around the representation of gender in entertainment media. One study analyzed the disparity between speaking roles for men and women and also what type of roles men and women were shown as portraying on screen. The Institute conducted this research by analyzing G-rated films from 1990 to 2005 and concluded that fewer than one out of three of the speaking characters (both real and animated) were played by women. [14] Another study looked at gender differences both on screen media and behind the scenes of media production. The Geena Davis Institute investigated and discovered that in the US film industry, only 8% of directors are women, coupled with 19% of producers and 13.6% of writers. [15] Several other studies conducted by the institute concern additional issues regarding gender and media including gender disparity in media across several countries as well as the portrayal of gender in films specifically marketed to young girls and families. [16] Each year, the institute studies female representation in entertainment and publishes their findings. [2] Through this study, the institute hopes that bringing the facts about media representation to the public's attention will bring positive change for female representation in the media. In 2015, the institute studied the top 100 grossing films of 2014 and 2015 and found that, overall, women spoke less than men and received less screen time in films. [17] However, the study also found that “women had a particularly strong presence in the comedy and action genres.” [17]
In 2016, the organization found that there were increasingly more female leads in films than ever before. [18] A separate study exemplifies the influence of female leads: after the release of films like The Hunger Games and Brave , both of which feature female archers as leads, the number of girls participating in archery greatly increased. [19] According to Davis, “68% of the film companies they’ve worked with have changed two or more of their projects” to include more female representation. [20]
In partnership with the Lyda Hill Foundation, the institute released a 2018 study of the media representation of female characters in the science, technology, engineering and math career fields. The study showed that men depicted 62.3% of all STEM characters, while women accounted for 37.1%. [21] In a survey of girls and young women, the majority of participants acknowledged the impact of female STEM characters in the media. [22] Particularly influential characters were April Sexton (Chicago Med), Addison Montgomery (Private Practice) and Temperance Brennan (Bones). [23] In addition, the study revealed that female STEM mentors as well as personal connections to female STEM professionals and supportiveness contribute to more girls choosing a career in the field. [24]
In partnership with Equimundo, the institute released a study in 2022 about the representation of male caregivers in popular television programs from 2013 to 2020. The study found a similar number of male and female caregivers shown in the shows, but gender differences in their portrayals. Male caregivers were nearly two times as likely than female caregivers to be shown as incompetent — a perpetuation of the “apprentice dad” trope, and male caregivers were one and a half times more likely than female caregivers to be emotionally abusive, and four times more likely to be physically abusive — a perpetuation of the “abusive dad” trope. [25]
In addition to many of their research contributions, Geena Davis also created the Bentonville Film Festival. Davis founded the Bentonville Film Festival with Trevor Drinkwater. Films that are in the Bentonville film festival are guaranteed distribution, a move that Davis says will fix the disproportionate number of women creators in Hollywood. [26] The yearly festival is held in Bentonville, Arkansas. Nearly 100 films are showcased at the growing festival. The festival also has concerts with various artists each year. In 2018 country singers Carly Pearce and Lauren Alaina performed as well as Jillian Jacqueline, Vintage Troube and Fifth Harmony's Ally Brooke. [27] [28]
Virginia Elizabeth "Geena" Davis is an American actor, activist, fashion model, and producer. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
Tokenism is the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to be inclusive to members of minority groups, especially by recruiting people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of racial or gender equality within a workplace or educational context. The effort of including a token individual in work or school is usually intended to create the impression of social inclusiveness and diversity.
The celluloid ceiling is a metaphor for the underrepresentation of women in hiring and employment in Hollywood. The term is a play on the metaphor of the "glass ceiling", which describes an invisible barrier that keeps a given demographic from rising beyond a certain level in a hierarchy. Celluloid refers to the material used to make the film stock that was once used to make motion pictures. The term is usually applied to behind the screen workers only.
The Bechdel test, also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test, is a measure of the representation of women in film and other fiction. The test asks whether a work features at least two female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man. In some iterations, the requirement that the two female characters be named characters is added.
The representation of gender in horror films, particularly depictions of women, has been the subject of critical commentary.
Women are often under-represented in the academic and professional fields of engineering; however, many women have contributed to the diverse fields of engineering historically and currently. A number of organizations and programs have been created to understand and overcome this tradition of gender disparity. Some have decried this gender gap, saying that it indicates the absence of potential talent. Though the gender gap as a whole is narrowing, there is still a growing gap with minority women compared to their white counterparts. Gender stereotypes, low rates of female engineering students, and engineering culture are factors that contribute to the current situation where men dominate in fields relating to engineering sciences.
The exploitation of women in mass media is the use or portrayal of women in mass media such as television, film, music, and advertising as objects or sexual beings, in order to increase the appeal of media or a product to the detriment of the women being portrayed, and women in society. This process includes the presentation of women as sexual objects and the setting of feminine beauty ideals that women are expected to reflect. Sexual exploitation of women in the media dates back to 19th century Paris, in which ballerinas were exposed to harassment and objectification. The most often criticized aspect of the use of women in mass media is sexual objectification, but dismemberment can be a part of the objectification as well. The exploitation of women in mass media has been criticized by feminists and other advocates of women's rights, and is a topic of discussion in feminist studies and other fields of scholarship.
Timothy Shary is an American film scholar, and a leading authority on the representation of youth in movies. He has been a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Clark University, and the University of Oklahoma. He is now a professor at Eastern Florida State College.
Gender plays a role in mass media and is represented within media platforms. These platforms are not limited to film, radio, television, advertisement, social media, and video games. Initiatives and resources exist to promote gender equality and reinforce women's empowerment in the media industry and representations. For example, UNESCO, in cooperation with the International Federation of Journalists, elaborated the Gender-sensitive Indicators for Media contributing to gender equality and women's empowerment in all forms of media.
The Smurfette principle is the practice in media, such as film and television, to include only one woman in an otherwise entirely male ensemble. It establishes a male-dominated narrative, where the woman is the exception and exists only in reference to the men. The concept is named after Smurfette, the only female among the Smurfs, a group of comic book creatures.
Inequality in Hollywood refers to the various forms of discrimination and social inequality in the American media industry. There are many branches of the media industry, such as news, television, film, music, agencies, studios, to name some of the major players. In each one of these branches, there are many instances of inequality since Hollywood formed as the entertainment hub of America in the early 1900s.
Women are involved in the film industry in all roles, including as film directors, actresses, cinematographers, film producers, film critics, and other film industry professions, though women have been underrepresented in creative positions.
The Bentonville Film Festival (BFF) is an American film festival held annually in Bentonville, Arkansas that focuses on diversity.
Gender disparity in computing concerns the disparity between the number of men in the field of computing in relation to the lack of women in the field. Originally, computing was seen as a female occupation. As the field evolved, so too did the demographics, and the gender gap shifted from female dominated to male dominated. The believed need for more diversity and an equal gender gap has led to public policy debates regarding gender equality. Many organizations have sought to create initiatives to bring more women into the field of computing.
The female gaze is a feminist theory term referring to the gaze of the female spectator, character or director of an artistic work, but more than the gender it is an issue of representing women as subjects having agency. As such all genders can create films with a female gaze. It is a response to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey's term "the male gaze", which represents not only the gaze of a heterosexual male viewer but also the gaze of the male character and the male creator of the film. In that sense it is close, though different, from the Matrixial gaze coined in 1985 by Bracha L. Ettinger. In contemporary usage, the female gaze has been used to refer to the perspective a female filmmaker (screenwriter/director/producer) brings to a film that might be different from a male view of the subject.
Female education in STEM refers to child and adult female representation in the educational fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In 2017, 33% of students in STEM fields were women.
Films have portrayed professional women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in various ways throughout film history.
Ann Tsukamoto was born in California on July 6, 1952. She is well known now as an Asian American stem cell researcher and inventor. During her career, she co-patented a process that allowed the human stem cell to be isolated, and the patent was granted in 1991. Tsukamoto’s research and contributions in the medical field have led to groundbreaking advancements of stem cell research as it pertains to cancer patients. She is a pioneer in her field, yet is underrepresented for her discoveries.
ReFrame is a US non-profit organization founded by Women in Film LA and the Sundance Institute together with over 50 leaders and influencers in Hollywood, with the goal of providing research, support, and a practical framework to its partner companies to give them a way to "mitigate bias during the creative decision-making and hiring process, celebrate successes, and measure progress toward a more gender-representative industry on all levels". Alison Emilio serves as the director.
The Original Six are a group of women directors who created the Women's Steering Committee (WSC) of the Directors Guild of America (DGA). Dolores Ferraro, Joelle Dobrow, Lynne Littman, Nell Cox, Susan Bay Nimoy and Victoria Hochberg formed the Women's Steering Committee of the Directors Guild of America in 1979. They carried out landmark research showing that women held only 0.5% of directing jobs in film and television, which they reported to the Guild, the studios and the press.
