News Archive
With ‘Four More Shots Please!,’ India Gets Its Own ‘Sex and the City’
When the HBO series “Sex and the City” first arrived on TV screens in 1998, sex had become “the reigning political story,” according to the writer Julie Salamon. The show was a product and a catalyst of a zeitgeist in which financially independent and imperfect women had carved out a space for themselves and their casual, raging sex lives. The show’s producer, director, cinematographer and editor are all women, an extremely rare feat in India. (In 2014, a study by U.N. Women and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found that for every woman behind the camera in the Indian film industry, there were 6.2 men.) Read More…
Experts make the case for greater diversity and inclusion in marketing
To coincide with the launch of the WFA Marketer’s Approach to Diversity and Inclusion, WFA asked six industry leaders why they think prioritising diversity and inclusion in the marketing industry is so important. Madeline Di Nonno is CEO of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, a non-profit that advocates for the equal representation for women in media. In 2017, the Institute released the results of a seminal piece of research on more than 2,000 ads from the Cannes Lions archive, shining a light on how even some of the industry’s most celebrated work can perpetuate bias. Read More…
Women Rocking Wall Street
This guest is one for the ages. We sat down with The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, CEO, Madeline Di Nonno to discuss ways they’re encouraging television and other media to infuse intersectionality, diversity and inclusion in their content. Listen to podcast…
Disability Representation In Family Films Hits Historic High
Characters with disabilities are increasingly playing leading roles in the nation’s most popular family films, according to a new analysis. There was a lead character with a disability in 8 percent of the 100 top-grossing family films last year, a historic high. By contrast, this statistic sat at just 1 percent for most of the last decade. The findings come from a report looking at the representation of race, gender, sexuality, age, body size and disability in films released in 2019 that was produced by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media at Mount Saint Mary’s University. Read More…
From iCarly to showcasing STEM careers: What Miranda Cosgrove is doing now
For six seasons, Miranda Cosgrove played a precocious teenager whose web show became an internet phenomenon on Nickelodeon’s iCarly. Now, she’s the host of Mission Unstoppable, a CBS Saturday-morning show that showcases female engineers, mathematicians, and astronauts doing all sorts of world-changing stuff. The show is executive produced by Cosgrove and actress Geena Davis, who believes the lively reports on superstars like Diana Trujillo — the head of the Mars Rover program — have already inspired young viewers in the series’ first season. “There’s a direct correlation between what happens on screen and what people do in real life.” Read More…
The Accidental Activist: See Geena Davis Change the World
Looking back from where Geena Davis stands now, it’s more than a little ironic that she made her film debut at 26 in the 1982 hit, Tootsie (in her skivvies no less), a film about a struggling actor (Dustin Hoffman) who, unable to find work as a man, poses as a woman and becomes a star. Fast forward to the present and you’ll find the actress, best known for her iconic performances in the female-driven films A League of Their Own and Thelma and Louise, and her Oscar-winning role in The Accidental Tourist, has emerged as a not so accidental activist for gender equality in entertainment targeting children and families. “The film that actually changed my life was Thelma and Louise,” Ms. Davis said. Read More…
Geena Davis Explains Why She Took Up Archery — and How She Almost Made the 2000 Olympic Team
Geena Davis has played several adventurous, physically demanding roles over the course of her acting career — baseball catcher, pirate queen, sleeper super-spy among them. But her greatest athletic challenge came in her personal life, when she became an Olympic-caliber archery champion at age 41. It all started as an unlikely notion, Davis, now 63, tells PEOPLE, when she was watching the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and became fascinated with the sport of archery, where American Justin Huish won two gold medals. “They had a lot of coverage of archery because America was winning all the gold medals, And I was like Wow!” Read More…
Stay Connected With Us During Social Distancing – A Message from Geena Davis
We hope you are staying safe! We are all grappling with the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19, which is dramatically impacting our ability to connect, communicate and engage. Like all of you, we have also had to buckle down and postpone all of our live event programming and activities including our See Jane Salons, Global Symposiums, Influencer Screenings and presentations until the end of April. This decision was necessary to ensure the safety of our members and community partners, and of course, the Institute team. Read More…
Geena Davis’ Bentonville Film Festival Announces Date Change
Out of an abundance of caution and public health concerns regarding the coronavirus (COVID-19), and to prioritize the safety of our artists, partners, creators, brands, and team, the Bentonville Film Festival has made the decision to move the festival’s 2020 dates from April 29-May 2 to August 5-8. Read More…
Google Debuts Podcast on the Future of Marketing
The dominant player in digital advertising now has a podcast on digital marketing. Google released the first episode of a new podcast series today under its research and insights outlet, Think With Google. Each episode of the six-episode series will be 20 minutes long. “The podcast series … allows for a less formal conversation among marketers on some of the key topics that are most relevant to the industry,” said Kate Stanford, Google’s managing director for ads marketing. The first episode focuses on diversity and inclusion in marketing and features Google’s CMO Lorraine Twohill and Madeline Di Nonno, CEO of the Geena Davis Institute. While the podcast is about the future of marketing, it won’t specifically discuss the future of Google’s stronghold in digital advertising. Instead, Stanford said, the series will take a broader approach by discussing consumer behavior trends, effective marketing strategies and the changing role of the CMO. Read More…
