United Nations Radio

Geena Davis

Academy Award winning actress Geena Davis has been at the United Nations this week. Gerry Adams reports.

Duration: 7'01"

She addressed the meeting of the Economic and Social Council, saying she was very concerned about the media images and stereotypes of women that influence girls as they grow up. I had an opportunity to ask her why this was so important to her:

Davis: It was when my daughter was born. When she was about 2, I started watching pre-school programmes and G-rated videos and things with her and really noticed what I perceived to be a big gender disparity in these entertainments for little kids. And it was stunning really because it made no sense why that would e the case in the 21st century, why we are showing little children a very imbalanced world where the female characters are usually highly stereotyped, a sort of almost 50s version of society. Obviously there are notable exceptions like Dora the Explorer but in general, it seemed like girls were missing, female characters were missing 1:07 and this eventually led me to raise funds for some research and my project, called "Se Jane", sponsored the largest analysis ever done of G-rated movies and also of television programmes made for kids 11 and under. And we found that there was such a gender disparity, we ended up calling the report "Where the Girls Aren't". And it was really quite striking how the male characters outnumbered the female characters three to one. In a group scene or a crowd scene, it went up to five to one. 1:55 and of the few female characters that are there, many are highly stereotyped or hyper-sexualized, even in G-rated programmes.
In fact, one of the disturbing findings we found was that female characters in G-rated movies wear the same amount of sexually revealing clothing as in R-rated movies, which I thought was very shocking. And also unnecessary. So what we've been doing is taking the research - we have on-going research as well - taking the research to the writers, the animators, the studios, networks and creators to share our data with them and the really positive thing that we've learned is that it is not a conspiracy. In fact for the most part they are very much not aware of this imbalance. I think that often people unconsciously assume that if there is one important female character, well you've sort of covered females. And certainly in most movies you can think of for kids, there is at least one significant female character. But then the world of the movie ends up being populated by male characters - the friends and the rest of the group and the sidekicks and the crowds even.
There are several movies that we looked at where the entire crowd of the village or the group or the forest or whatever is all male characters! 3:47 And you're wondering, "How did that happen?" But also why is it that case in the movie. One of the funniest examples I can think of is the Smurfs which was on sort of 1980 to 1990 and there are 100 Smurfs. At first there were no female characters then they had one Smurfette. So I'm not really sure what the thinking was there!

Adams:  You say this has been going on since 1947 and I imagine you grew up seeing the same images that we are seeing today. How were you able to overcome this?

Davis: I didn't notice either. When I was a kid, I didn't notice at all that girls are missing because as a kid you don't know any different. You're not three years old and say, "Where am I? I don't see myself reflected there ." and in fact, my best fried and I would pretend to be male characters from television. We would play the Rifleman and never thought it was odd that we didn't have any female characters that we would like to be. But I think I had a real awakening to all of this when I was in two movies back to back, Thelma and Louise and ? that really resonated with women. And it struck me then how few opportunities we give women to feel great about the movies that hey see and movies that are about women and about something significant that women are doing.
So that really stuck with me and changed the way that I looked at Hollywood and looked at the kind of opportunities women have.

Adams: So why do you think this is so important for girls around the world, not just the United States or developed countries?

Davis: I think it's incredibly important as far as girls and boys learning the value and role of women in society. If we are constantly showing boys and girls these created worlds where there are fare fewer women, where they do less interesting things, they're relegated to the sidelines or they're serving merely as eye candy, which is very often the case, it sends a strong message that girls have far less value than boys and that their value is in how they look. And I know that as a mother, when I watch some shows, movies or whatever with my daughter, I just cringe when the female character comes on. And I think, what must this little child think about what they are saying about that female character, howu they are looking at her and how she's behaving. What possible positive outcome can there be? And also for my sons to watch that? When you really think of seeing it through the child's eyes, its realy rather appaling.

So how do you think the UN can help?

UNIFEM I know cares a great deal about media images and impacting that and knows the value of improving media images so I am hoping that I can just help them in their efforts in this area and also, we know that around the world, about 80% of the entertainments that children see in other countries is created in the United States. So I think that we here have an obligation to think about what we're exporting around the world, you know this image, this highly sexualized image of girls and women is something that we're sending out and sending to children all around the world and I think it's very unfortunate and bears thinking about.

Adams: What is your next role and how does it view women?

Davis: Ha, you know, I don't know what my next role is right now but I think it will probably have a very good part for a woman in it.. (laughter) I really you know, it started out that I would just choose parts because I thought it was something fun to do, you know, that it was challenging in some way but I have come to realize that it's more that it's not interesting to be a one dimensional character, I don't want to be the girlfriend of, or the person in danger, you know. I would rather play baseball than be the girlfriend of the baseball player so that's kind of how I approach things.