News Archive
Geena Davis Changed Hollywood. Now Give Her More Parts.
When Geena Davis’s daughter was 2, she did what most mothers do: she started to show her children’s movies and TV shows. What she never expected was to be horrified. Watching these movies alongside young Alizeh, she noticed that there were far more male characters than female characters, by an obscene number. It was so obvious, she thought, that surely others have noticed, too. “In the 21st century, it was completely crazy to me that we would be teaching kids to have gender bias from minute one,” she says. “When we should be showing them boys and girls equally because the world is very diverse.” Read More…
‘This Changes Everything’: Geena Davis On Empowering Women In Hollywood
A new documentary explores how women in Hollywood are pushing for more representation in front of and behind the camera. Geena Davis and director Maria Giese discuss the dramatic disparities on screen. Geena Davis starred in two movies about female empowerment – “Thelma & Louise” and “A League Of Their Own.” But when she got older and roles started to dry up, she realized how unempowered women were in Hollywood. In 2004, she founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to get the actual data comparing the number and types of male and female roles and to use that data to convince the industry of the need for change. Listen Now…
The ‘This Changes Everything’ Trailer Will Make You Feel Empowered & Inspired
It was October of 2018 when the #MeToo movement began to break into mainstream consciousness. The fall of Harvey Weinstein, the longtime head of Miramax, at the beginning of that month was only the tip of the iceberg. It began a discussion over the gender and race disparities on and off screen. It started a movement that proclaims that representation matters today. Now, director Tom Donahue has sat down some of the biggest names in the entertainment business to talk about it, and you can get a glimpse of this story in the This Changes Everything trailer. Read More…
Geena Talks ‘This Changes Everything’ on WNYC
Actor Geena Davis joins us to discuss her activism for gender parity and representation in Hollywood, and her new documentary, “This Changes Everything,” about the problems women encounter in gaining equality with their male colleagues in the entertainment industry. In October, Davis will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy at the Governor’s Awards. Listen now…
Geena Davis shares fight for gender equality in Hollywood
Oscar winner Geena Davis joins the 3rd hour of TODAY to talk about how she continues to champion gender equality in entertainment and how young girls are highly impressionable to movies. Davis spotlights this industry-wide problem in the documentary “This Changes Everything.” Watch Now…
Geena Davis Says There’s Been Zero Progress in Female Representation in Media
“When my daughter was a toddler, I sat her down to watch preschool shows and videos and things. And the very first thing I watched, I noticed there were far more male characters than female characters. I thought, you know, in the 21st century, surely by now we should be showing kids that boys and girls share the sandbox equally. It was in everything and then, just like I said, I did — in that clip, i didn’t intend to make it my life’s mission but since nobody was noticing it. I decided I’m going to get the data, and then I can go directly to the creators and share it with them in a private way, you know, in a friendly way, ‘You didn’t know this,’ but, and, but, wow. They were horrified.” Watch video…
Does It Change Everything? New Geena Davis Doc on Hollywood Tries To Change Inequities
In the opening moments of the documentary, “This Changes Everything,” actress and executive producer of the movie, Geena Davis cracks a joke that is the heart of the film. Referring to the children’s books of “See Dick, See Jane,” Davis says,” I felt like we see Dick all the time. I want to see more Jane.” As founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media, Davis calls her company, See Jane. Org. Davis says she was approached by director Tom Donahue to get involved as a sponsor in the film he had already been working on for two years and wanted her to be interviewed in the film. And yes, the director of a documentary about the lack of female directors and overall sexism and under-representation of women in Hollywood, is a man. It’s the first question Donahue addresses in a brief video panel after the airing of the film, set to open in theaters is August across the country. Read More…
Screenwriters can play key role in gender parity, actors say
Academy Award-winning actor Geena Davis says achieving gender parity on screen is simple, and it could happen overnight. “Just go through (the script) and cross out a bunch of male first names and put female first names. That’s all you have to do,” Davis told the audience during a panel Saturday at AT&T’s SHAPE media conference in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank. Davis joined fellow actor Mayim Bialik on stage at the conference to discuss how gender parity in media can create social change. The conversation revolved around the need for diversity on screen to break stereotypes and encourage young people to pursue careers they might otherwise have felt were off limits to them. Read More…
Mars Releases Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media Findings on Gender Representation in Advertising at Cannes Lions Festival
Mars, Incorporated today announced initial findings from research commissioned with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media at Mount Saint Mary’s University (the Institute) at the 2019 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Speaking during the Institute’s Panel, Mars representative and Chief Category Officer for Mars Wrigley Berta De Pablos said: “As one of the world’s most awarded advertisers, Mars has a responsibility to shape the world we want tomorrow. We believe the best advertisements are about more than just great creative. The best ads take on the responsibility to accurately reflect society. We hope that by releasing some of our findings from the Institute we can encourage the larger industry to prioritize the equitable inclusion and representation of women.” The research leveraged the Institute’s proprietary GD-IQ (Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient) machine learning tool to analyze more than 200 Mars global television adverts across various Chocolate, Gum, Fruity Confections, Petcare and Food brands. Read More…
Gender Stereotypes Banned in British Advertising
Men unable to change diapers; women cleaning while men kick their feet up on the couch; women having trouble with parking: Scenes like these, which play on gender stereotypes, are now banned in British advertisements. Britain’s advertising regulator announced the changes in December, but companies were given a six-month adjustment period before they took effect. The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media worked with Google to analyze more than 2,000 English-language commercials: It found that between 2006 and 2016, the number of female characters in video advertisements remained essentially unchanged. The amount of screen time men had was fourfold that of women, and men spoke about seven times as often as women did. While ads featuring only men accounted for about a quarter of all ads, those that featured solely women made up 5 percent of the total. Read More…
