I live for the dawn, drinking in the sight of the sea as the morning bus collects me and other early risers, coasting along the Sausalito esplanade and across the Golden Gate Bridge, delivering us into San Francisco.
Today my morning ritual changed with a red-eye flight to Los Angeles. I was there to attend a The Third Symposium on Gender in Media hosted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. This is a biennial convening of leading executives from the entertainment industry, corporations, and organizations, all with the common goal of changing how women and girls are portrayed around the globe.
Geena Davis created the Institute, and a sister initiative called See Jane, after watching children’s entertainment with her young daughter and being astounded at the lack of female characters. In establishing the Institute, Geena Davis also commissioned the largest research project on gender in film and television ever undertaken with Dr. Stacy Smith at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
The research confirmed the gender gap that Geena Davis had observed: in family films there is only one female for every three male characters, and in group scenes only 17% of the characters are female. Furthermore, girls who watch the most television appear to lose ambition due to a lack of strong girl characters. This includes a lack of female lawyers, high court judges, university professors, CEOs and scientists.
It’s a call to arms, both for the entertainment industry to create a range of female characters in television and for girls to locate and claim their own power – modeled by feisty and confident women who also know how to use humor to great effect. This is important as girls and women are, in the main, not funny on television – they are more likely the keeper of the rules – the “straight guy’ to the comic relief. So we need to break the stereotypes and for girls to be humorous, comic and funny on screen without going to extremes. In short, we need to allow female characters the dimensions accorded to men within their roles.
During the symposium, speakers included female producers and directors of series including The Good Wife, Doc McStuffins, The Revolutionary Optimists, Sid the Science Kid, Me and My Monsters and The Invisible War who all spoke about their work. We were shown clips of different television series and the messages used to change stereotypes.
In one memorable animation scene, a class is on an excursion to hear about how to have a career in science and the girl character is really excited until her classroom friend, a boy, tells her she can’t go because girls can’t be scientists. She tags along anyway, feeling forlorn, and when the class enters the building they find the scientist who is waiting to speak to them is female. What follows is an enlightening dialogue between the boy and the scientist. The boy later apologizes to the girl for thinking she couldn’t be a scientist and she responds with sympathy. “Oh, that’s okay. You were just confused.”
It’s sad (infuriating, outrageous) that there is this level of confusion about the worlds that girls and women can inhabit. And yet, despite the dismal figures, this dedicated focus on creating strong characters for girls and women is paying off. Take Doc McStuffins, an animated series about a six-year African American old girl who dreams of becoming a doctor and who runs a clinic for stuffed animals and broken toys out of her backyard playhouse. For Dr. Myiesha Taylor, who watches Disney Channel’s “Doc McStuffins” with her 4-year-old, Hana, the show sent a much-needed message to girls of color that they could dream big.
“It’s so nice to see this child of color in a starring role, not just in the supporting cast. It’s all about her,” Taylor said. “And she’s an aspiring intellectual professional, not a singer or dancer or athlete.” In return, Taylor created an online representation of the animated Doc surrounded by photos of 131 black women who are Doc’s real life-counterparts, most appearing in their scrubs or doctor’s coats. “We are trailblazers,” Taylor proclaimed on her website. “We are women of color. We are physicians. We ARE role-models. We are Doc McStuffins all grown up!”
The creator and Executive Producer of the series, Chris Nee, told us that her young son, on watching the Doc McStuffin series for the first time, looked up at her and said “Mommy? Can boys be doctors too?”
As Geena Davis said during the forum: “If you can see it, you can be it. That’s why I created ‘See Jane’. It’s a message to girls that ‘You can be anything you want!’”
What takes place outside of the characters on the screen is equally important in reinforcing positive images for girls and young women so that they feel confident in their ability to lead rich and amazing lives. This includes mentoring. I heard a powerful story from a woman I met over the course of the day and who was, at a relatively young age herself, a foster mum to two high risk young women who were sisters. This woman told my colleague and me about a conversation she had with one of the girls in order to stop her spiraling downward. “I’m going to stay with you, I’m not going to abandon you. I’m going to be different to every other person you’ve had in your life to this point. And I’m going to cheer you on to become what become what you want to become.”
Later in the day, up on stage, a speaker told her own story of being a foster mum to a teenage girl who was confused from all her television watching about the sexualization of young girl characters. “Do I have to dress like that on a first date? Do I have to do that?”
This is what girls are seeing.
And so I hope we can catalyze new initiatives and change the base of predominantly male writers through projects such as Girls Write Movies or Girls Make Movies. In this way we can usher in a new generation of female film and television writers, producers, directors and content makers. One where girls learn how to create storylines and edit content so that, wherever they happen to be in the world, their narrative storytelling and documentaries can reflect the reality of their lived experience. Let’s follow the girl and see where she leads, where she learns and where she leans.
The brilliant organization, World Pulse, is doing this, in partnership with other organizations, including the Global Fund for Women, in order to build the largest interactive network of women in the world. The intention is to unite millions of women into a powerful collective media force to drive a more inclusive global agenda.
In support of this, we need to encourage girls and young women to be brave and to speak out. To claim their speaking voice rather than waiting to be heard. This is important because there’s a long way to go, on and off the screen. During the symposium, we heard that The White House Project has been tracking women in leadership positions and has found that 17% captures much of the picture.
There is a total of 17% representation of leadership across all sectors including 16% in the House of Representatives, 16% as Board Members; 17% as Cardiac Surgeons and 17% females in the Animators Guild. Even in movies aimed at young children, female characters are six times more likely to be sexualized than male characters.
Also, only 17% of women in crowd scenes in movies. What is this? Do male writers think that women don’t gather? Granted, the formal spaces for women to gather to organize internationally are diminishing for women focused on collective action for social change. But this is not out of a desire by women to go solo or any phobia they may have against gathering.
So, 17% is the new normal for women’s leadership and visibility. We’ve got to change that.
As Geena Davis says, “If we change what looks normal then we change the reality – if girls can see it, they can be it.” She then announced the launch of a global gender in media research study focused on female portrayals and representation in film, which has never been done before.
As we were leaving the symposium, we were given copies of Variety magazine with a full page ad on the back with the headline ‘November is ‘add female characters’ month.’ Quick tips included: ‘Go through your script and change several male characters to female.’; ‘Ensure that your crowd scenes are half female by writing it in the script, A crowd gathers, which is half women.’; ‘If there is a group, gang, squad or team in your story, make several of them female, not just one.’
And what is happening to those powerful female role models when they are in office? Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader and the highest ranking female politician in American history, was asked by a reporter this week if she was considering stepping aside for a younger person given she was, well, old. (70, to be precise). The fact that such a question had never been asked of Mitch McConnell, United States Senator, or any of the other ‘old’ males in US Congress did not seem to occur to this reporter.
A young girl watching Nancy Pelosi’s response to this reporter would have felt a surge of confidence, from the many opportunities Nancy Pelosi outlined that she’d given to young women. And also in watching Nancy Pelosi stand proudly, with a clan of women Parliamentarians who, literally and otherwise, ‘had her back’ as she chastised him and claimed her right as a woman and as a mother to secure and retain a stellar career in public service.
A couple of weeks ago, at my library, I watched some children disappear into a room to choose a costume for a parade. One of the boys emerged, triumphant, with a Dr. Seuss hat as big as his smile, almost trumping his elfin body. I heard a squeal from inside the room and then, in a rush of energy, a pint sized girl in a Wonder Woman costume erupted as she attempted a full flight launch in her glorious red cape. She turned to the boy “Wyatt, you might be a doctor with a big hat but I can go anywhere, I can fly and make wonder magic!” And with that she ran to greet her mother as Wyatt turned and saw me watching and said “that was Jane.”
Jane Sloane