Foreword
Geena Davis, Founder and Madeline DiNonno, CEO
At the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, we’ve conducted numerous studies over the years showing that the entertainment media largely fails to produce high-quality portrayals of girls and women. This has a real impact on young viewers’ ideas about themselves and the occupations they pursue. This is especially the case when it comes to representations of women’s leadership.
We are thrilled with the opportunity to partner with Plan International to conduct the first global study of girls’ leadership. This study is the most comprehensive to date, taking into account the attitudes and opinions of over 10,000 girls and young women across the globe. And it is also the first global analysis of how women’s leadership is portrayed in the top-grossing films in 20 countries around the world.
Women are vastly underrepresented when it comes to leadership positions in both government and business. They constitute 51% of the population, but hold just 23% of legislative seats and only 11% of head of state positions. Fewer than 7% of CEO positions at Fortune 500 companies are held by women. In short, we have a long way to go before women are represented in positions of power in a way that reflects their presence in societies around the world.
The findings of this study show that media representations of women’s leadership matter. While many factors discourage girls and young women from pursuing leadership positions, having women leaders as roles models in popular media, as well as in the community, inspires girls to aim high.
If we want to see more women in leadership positions in the real world, girls need to see more women leaders in the fictional worlds of entertainment media.
INTRODUCTION
“Because usually when we talk about a leader I still come up with a man. I still think about a man. [This idea] It’s really popular… people think that men are more powerful.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 21, VIETNAM
This report by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media at Mount Saint Mary’s University and Plan International, is the second phase of a two-part research project commissioned as an in-depth and ambitious look at female leadership. In many ways the research makes disheartening reading because it tells us clearly that girls and women, as citizens and certainly as leaders, are still not seen as equal to boys and men.
The key research component, and the backbone of this report, is an analysis by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media of the 56 top-grossing films from across 20 countries. The analysis tracked time on screen, the gender of the characters and the portrayal of leadership. These films show a world which is run by men, for men. The filmmakers, too, are predominantly male. Women characters rarely lead a story line. They are sexualised and objectified in a way that men never are. Women are portrayed as leaders in their countries, workplaces and communities in these films, though there are not many of them. But the camera will linger on their bodies, they will be seen partially nude and wearing revealing clothing: these factors undermine their authority. And what they tell young people about the world they inhabit keeps girls and young women subservient and anxious. Female bodies are a commodity and their brains irrelevant. These stereotypes send signals to girls and boys about what they can expect and what is expected from them in their careers and in other parts of their lives.
The scale of media influence on society is well- researched and well known and must not be underestimated:
- Media wields a significant influence on how we think and define our place in society.1
- Entertainment media is powerful: 54 of the 56 top-grossing films of 2018 earned a staggering $21,691,475,835 at the box office.
- It is highly westernised and U.S. centric: there was a huge overlap of the top ten films in the 20 countries represented in our study in favour of films produced in the United States.
“Film is the strongest media and global artform, it can have such a big impact. Art can create reality and influence how we can see each other. Film can create empathy, it can help change perspectives and help us see things from other points of view. That’s not just for girls, that’s for all of us, to see diversity.”
ELLI TOIVONIEMI, 35, PRODUCER-DIRECTOR, FINLAND*
For many years the representation of girls and women in the media has been the subject of debate: campaigning for change has been going on for decades and still in 2019 we can see clearly that very little has changed. Recently, there have been signs that perhaps, at last, the media industry itself is beginning to take a more critical look at the images on our screens and the stories they tell; not least because women in the entertainment industry are calling out the treatment they receive. But there have been signs before, and sexism and stereotyping in the media has still not been eradicated.
It may, finally, be time for change and this research provides clear evidence of how essential that is for girls and young women, and for society as a whole. To create an equal world, we need the whole picture, not just half the story.
“It’s urgent that we no longer create stories that teach children to view women and girls as second-class citizens — not when we’ve seen the level of sexism in our culture so egregiously put on display.”
Geena Davis, Founder & Chair of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
* All interviews with women filmmakers, as included in the Special Feature on page 18, were conducted by Wendy Mitchell for this report, July 2019.
Key Findings
Girls and young women have told us clearly that they are influenced by what they see on screen. And the underlying messages of the films analysed have changed little for decades: male characters dominate the storylines; women leaders, where they do exist, may be portrayed as intelligent, likeable and effective but they are also sexualised and objectified; female leadership is rare and at national level women leaders are not up to the job.
The overall make-up of the characters in the 2018 top-grossing films analysed reflect the films’ producers rather than their audience: they are white, male and middle-class.
Where the films portray female leadership, women leaders are shown in some contexts – at work, in the community and the family – as more intelligent and more effective than male leaders. This changes at national level.
- In all contexts male leaders are much more visible: overall 42% of male, compared to 27% of female characters are shown on screen as leaders.
- Overall more female leaders are shown as intelligent than male leaders: 81% compared to 62%.
- Male leaders at national level are shown as more effective than female leaders: 57% compared to 44%
- Female leaders are far more likely than male leaders to be shown wearing revealing clothing: 30% compared to 7%
- Female leaders are nearly two times more likely to be shown as partially nude than male leaders: 15% compared to 8%.
- Characters who are female leaders are more likely to be shown completely naked at some point in the film than male leaders: 2% compared to 0.5%.
- Female leaders are more likely to be sexually objectified than male leaders: 15% compared to 4%.
- Female leaders are more likely to be sexually harassed than male leaders: 5% compared to 1%.
What Needs to Be Done
Girls and young women are also clear that they need role models on screen: they need to see themselves in the stories that surround them if they are to achieve gender equality, and their capacity for leadership is to be recognised and encouraged.
- To be it, they must see it. Make stories about female leadership visible and normal.
- Stop the sexualisation and the objectification of women and girls on screen.
- Fund female filmmakers, programme makers and content producers and address harassment and discrimination in the workplace to encourage girls and young women into the entertainment industry at all levels.
“When we see women playing secondary roles, young women can think it’s normal life to play a secondary role and lose ambition.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 23, SENEGAL
Collecting the Evidence2
The research that informs this report aims to fill the gap in our understanding of what it means for girls and young women to be leaders and what encourages and discourages their leadership aspirations. It cuts across economies, cultures and societies and includes the voices of over 10,000 girls and young women in 19 countries across the globe.3
The first phase of the research, launched at the Women Deliver Conference in June 2019,4 looked particularly at how girls define leadership and at how they become leaders – what hinders them and what helps them – and phase two of the research, informing this second report, focuses on the specific role of media in shaping girls’ aspirations and either restricting or enabling their success, responding to questions such as how does media portray leadership? Are female roles powerful in all senses of the word or are they ornamental, subservient, underdeveloped or mainly missing? What does that teach girls and young women?
“How can you imagine yourself doing these things if you can’t see it? Representation matters for young women, especially those who exist on the margins. In the Indigenous context, we have been misrepresented on screen for 100 years, those misrepresentations are damaging, they reinforce stigmas and feed into racist and sexist stereotypes.”
ELLE-MÁIJÁ TAILFEATHERS, 34,
WRITER-DIRECTOR-PRODUCER-ACTOR, CANADA
Setting the scene
MEDIA, GENDER AND LEADERSHIP
Photo: Plan International
Nearly 25 years ago, in 1995, during the Fourth World Conference on Women,5 189 UN Member States recognised the central role of media in shifting the gender stereotypes that influence how we think and act. Looking back is salutary because fundamentally little has changed:
- The UN Member States made women and media one of 12 critical areas of the Beijing Platform for Action and called on media everywhere to make a far greater contribution to women’s advancement.6
- They agreed that the number of women in the media must increase, including in decision- making.7 More should be done to present women as leaders and role models, and to do away with stereotypes.8
- It was argued that traditional perceptions of the roles of women and men in society must be rethought and that this involves the reorganisation of the basic institutions of society, including the media, which helps define what we think and has a crucial role to play in changing stereotyped views of the roles of men and women.9
“Print and electronic media do not provide a balanced picture of women’s diverse lives and contributions to society in a changing world.”
BEIJING PLATFORM FOR ACTION 1995
The Power of Story
Discussion on how the media portrays women and girls did not start in 1995. It has been an issue for many years and was a key area of debate for the women’s movement in the 1970s. In her seminal work, originally published in 1978, Gaye Tuchman analysed mass media – television, newspapers, magazines – and the advertising they carry to gather support for her argument that, by largely ignoring women or portraying them in stereotypical roles of victim and/or consumer, the mass media symbolically annihilate women.10 Tuchman noted that most media portray women, if at all, in traditional roles: homemaker, mother, or, if they are in the paid workforce, jobs of a clerical nature and other positions which are seen as traditionally reserved for women: there are few, if any, depictions of strong female characters in positions of responsibility or authority, even inside the home. For Tuchman, given the role that the mass media plays in shaping young girls’ wants, needs and expectations, this is cause for concern: the consistent repetition of such images can only encourage the maintenance of women’s subordinate position in society.
These findings are backed up by a 2016 review of earlier research on advertising and gender stereotypes, which also noted that historically women have been portrayed in an inferior manner relative to their capabilities and potential, and that advertising contributes to gender inequality by promoting sexism and distorted body images as valid and acceptable.11 In general, the review stated, gender stereotyping in advertising still exists and is prevalent in many countries around the world.
It is true, too, of film. In 2014 the study of representations of women’s leadership in different countries, conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media at Mount Saint Mary’s University, examined films in ten territories: Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.12 Across these ten regions, men dominated media portrayals of corporate (86%), political (91%), religious (100%), academic (71%), and entertainment (84%) leaders.
In 2014, women in the top-grossing films were nearly three times as likely as men to appear partially or fully nude: 26% and 9%, respectively.13
Media does not tell people what to think, but it tells people what topics to think about, and how to think about them by focusing on some aspects and not others.14 Media, whether print, film, online or on television, shapes perceptions of who can be an authentic leader, and in most cases, this means men. Press coverage of politics clearly reinforces the idea that leadership is a male domain.15 Research examining newspaper coverage of the Spanish elections, in France, Italy, Spain and the UK, found that while some coverage celebrates women politicians as standard bearers, others judge them more by their physical appearance or their performance as wives, mothers and mothers-to-be.16 More attention is paid to their personality traits, personal lives, dress and appearance, all of which signals that female candidates are less serious contenders.17 Female candidates also receive more coverage questioning their viability than male candidates,18 and are covered as being less authentic than their male competitors.19
In 2015, women made up only 24% of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news: in news about politics and government only 16% of people in the stories are women.20
Online media has actually increased sexism in public discussion about female candidates.21 Social media has become a visible forum for individuals to express bigoted beliefs, fueled by anonymity, and it presents a more hostile environment for female candidates who are not only discussed in more sexist terms than in legacy media,22 but are subject online to threats of violence and sexual harassment: hostility which also has the potential to spill out into the real world.23
“There is so much in the culture that is quietly telling women that our stories don’t matter.”
LENA DUNHAM, FROM THE DOCUMENTARY, HALF THE PICTURE, 201824
Media messages matter: they can affect our behaviour and form our opinions and it is alarming that what the new research for this report shows clearly is that we have not moved on: women are sexualised, objectified and their place is at home. Female leaders are a minority and, where they do exist, they are still sexually objectified. The films analysed include few characters whom girls can identify with and few who inspire them. Gender equality has not yet made a real impact on the stories told to our children.
The impact of female storytellers
FACTS & FIGURES28

In 2018, women comprised 20% of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the 250 top US grossing films. This represents an increase of two percentage points from 18% in 2017.

Last year, only 1% of films employed ten or more women in the above roles. In contrast, 74% of films employed ten or more men.

Women accounted for 8% of directors working on the top 250 films in 2018, down three percentage points from 11% in 2017. This is one percentage point below the 9% achieved in 1998.
Representations of women and girls in the media and how the media deals with female leadership in both popular culture and in the political arena are two aspects of gender bias but there is a third. One of the areas that the Beijing Platform called out in 1995 was that, while women were involved in careers in the media and communications sector, few had attained positions at decision-making level, nor did they serve on governing boards and bodies that influence media policy.25 This is still true today.
Over the last four decades, numerous studies have identified a link between having more women in key decision-making roles on production crews and having more women in the cast.26 These studies found that having a woman director and at least one woman on the writing team produces more female leads, more female characters, and more dialogue for these characters.
Female directors are especially important when it comes to hiring more women, both as cast and crew: of the top 500 films of 2018, films with at least one female director employed a greater percentage of women editors, writers, composers and cinematographers than films directed by men.27
The same study found that only eight percent of directors working on the top 250 films in 2018 were women. Why when this has been an issue for so long is change so slow? And what can be done about it?
“I don’t have another ground for comparison because I don’t know what it would be like to be a male director, but I think it is difficult for women to start out in any industry because the majority of the creative and financial control in most fields of work have been in the hands of men for centuries.”
ASH MAYFAIR, 34, FILMMAKER, VIETNAM
“I’ll work with male crew members and there is kind of this male brotherhood that happens between them – it’s often this unconscious internalised attitude toward women. I also feel that men are trusted more within the industry, regardless of their level of experience or skill... But it has gotten slightly better since I first started and that has much to do with the advocacy work of women in the industry pushing for something more.”
ELLE-MÁIJÁ TAILFEATHERS, 34,
WRITER-DIRECTOR-PRODUCER-ACTOR, CANADA
“It’s super important to see other women flourish, so they lead us, they encourage us, to use our full potential. Some people are telling me now that they are encouraged that I am the first Peruvian woman to show a film in Cannes. I’m getting little notes and messages from younger women who say, ‘You are a woman and you made it!’”
MELINA LEÓN, 42, FILMMAKER, PERU
“I didn’t really think about women not being treated as equal. I felt more age discrimination – I was ignored because I was very young. The industry was ageist. I’ve noticed it more in the past year or two with #MeToo, how men control the narrative and women are subject to that narrative. I hadn’t noticed before just how few Indian films were being directed by women. I understand it now, and I’m producing work with a lot of women filmmakers.”
GUNEET MONGA, 35, PRODUCER, INDIA
Signs of change
Ultimately, the issues of both how women and girls are represented in the media, how leadership is portrayed and who makes the decisions in media companies across all platforms has changed little since the Beijing Platform called for action in 1995. However, as women campaigners take to the streets and the internet, arguing for transformative and substantial change, recently there has been some progress, particularly for women in the media industry:
- The Time’s Up movement has resulted in the launch of Time’s Upx2, a campaign aiming to double the number of women in leadership and in other spaces where they are under-represented.29
- The 4% Challenge,30 launched at the Sundance Festival, is challenging the industry to hire more women filmmakers. Universal Filmed Entertainment Group became the first major studio to sign up: Universal Pictures, Focus Features, and DreamWorks Animation have each committed to announcing a woman-directed project by mid-2020.31
- The Danish Film Institute, in partnership with the Danish Producers Association, have introduced a self-report form for production companies to keep track of the gender balance in film production.32
- The British Film Institute (BFI) – a charity that promotes and preserves film and which awards Lottery funding for film production, distribution, education, audience development and market intelligence and research – has, in response to the 2010 UK Equalities Act, developed a set of diversity standards that underpins the award of funds for making films. The standards encourage equality of opportunity and tackle under-representation in the film industry and are a contractual requirement for projects funded by the BFI.33 The BFI has also committed to working with all active producers, film organisations and project leaders in the UK, to voluntarily adopt the standards by 2022, to ensure the sector is representative of the UK, both in terms of its workforce and the content it produces.
- The Swedish Film Institute launched a new initiative for professional women scriptwriters this year.34 A recent study found less than 30 percent of Sweden’s screenwriters are women – only one of Sweden’s eight big-budget films in 2018 featured a woman writer. The initiative aims to increase the number of female voices in films and support them to develop and make bigger budget projects.
- Sixteen of the eighty-seven studio films slated for release in 2019 have at least one woman credited as director which is up from just three last year, when half of the major studios had no female directors on their wide-release slates.35
“This is the start of a very exciting time for women filmmakers and I can only hope that this wave for change remains powerful and effective. It is so necessary for female artists to speak out and to speak in unison especially in our current political climate. I want to talk a little about the issue of equal pay as well... Economic support for women at all levels is the most powerful tool to achieve gender equality. We have to create jobs for women.”
ASH MAYFAIR, FILMMAKER, VIETNAM
There are, however, fewer attempts to tackle or acknowledge how the media affects gender stereotyping in society and its impact on the lives of girls and young women. As this research will show, the media – the stories we are told and the images that surround us – still plays a critical role in shaping girls and young women’s aspirations. It can be a force for good but it can also perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes that prevent girls and young women from fulfilling their potential and making their ambitions a reality.
“Hollywood has the ability to deliver dreams to girls and boys around the world about what they can be and what this world can be like. That is the power of story.”
STACY SMITH FROM THE DOCUMENTARY, HALF THE PICTURE, 201836
What Girls see
content analysis of box-office hits
“Knowing that young women need to see powerful females and more characters who look like them on the screen is the reason why I will never give up filmmaking.”
ASH MAYFAIR, 34, FILMMAKER, VIETNAM
Photo: Plan International
We know that the images and stories girls are surrounded by matter. They can be limiting: undermining ambition and self confidence in ways that girls and young women are often not even aware of. Or they can be inspirational. All of the interviewees acknowledged that entertainment media in general has a significant impact on the lives of young people in their society.
“Here in Senegal young people are looking very often at programmes and TV series. It’s a part of their life, they make some role models through these series.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 23, SENEGAL
“I guess media does have a lot of power over our thoughts and how we see the world. I think it plays a significant part in my life.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 18, CANADA
About the films analysed

CREW: none of the top-grossing films of 2018 analysed were directed by a woman. One-in-four had at least one female producer, and one in ten had at least one woman on the writing team.

MONEY: the top-grossing films of 2018 globally earned an average of $402 million at the box office. Films with female lead(s) earned less than films with male leads ($253 million compared to $387 million), while films with male and female co-leads grossed the most ($764 million).

LANGUAGE: the vast majority of top-grossing films, 81%, were English language films. 11% of the movies were Hindi language films, while the remainder, 9%, were Spanish language films.

LOCATION OF MOVIE PRODUCTION: the majority, 69%, of the top-grossing films across the globe were produced in the United States. Bollywood accounted for 11% of the top-grossing films in 2018.

RATINGS: 20% of films were rated PG, meaning they are appropriate for a general audience. Close to half, 47%, were rated PG-13: suitable for people aged 13 and older. 18% were rated R: suitable for people aged 17 and older. The remaining films were not rated.

GENRE: overall, 40% of the top-grossing films across the globe in 2018 were action/disaster films. Comedies and social dramas came in next, at 16% and 15%, respectively.
A young woman from Senegal emphasised the importance of role models when she referred to a TV star as an inspiration: “I can see she embodies power by combining her social and professional lives, and, in the future, I do not want to stay at home and just take care of children but do both things.”
We also know, from our 19-country survey that 83% of girls and young women say they have women leaders they admire as role models.37 They talked about the stories they had heard about women leaders: ranging from author and former first lady Michelle Obama to Kiran Bedi, retired Indian Police Service officer, social activist and politician; from Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai to Mariama Ba, Senegalese author and feminist; from actor and campaigner Emma Watson to Nunu Kumba, South Sudanese female politician.
“In life one needs a person to give us an example and to tell us, ‘You can do it, you can do it.’ Someone to encourage us.”
GIRL, AGED 15-17, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
In this next section we look at how the entertainment media portrays women. Are the stories in our most popular films providing girls with the role models they need or are women generally less successful, less visible and less powerful than the male leads?
Overall, the top-grossing films of 2018 reflect the same gender bias that researchers have documented for decades:
- male characters outnumber female characters two- to-one (67% compared to 33%)
- male characters speak twice as often as female characters (67% compared to 33%)
- male characters appear twice as often as female characters (64% compared to 36%)
- the top-grossing films in North America have fewer female speaking characters than the top-grossing films in other regions.
Alongside gender equality, social and ethnic diversity was a real issue for some of our interviewees.
“I’ve realised that men take it for granted that their voice is the only voice. That’s not necessarily part of their plan, they are not just trying to conquer. They just take it for granted that their voice is going to be heard, that they are going to have a place in this world, and they will be successful.”
MELINA LEÓN, 42, WRITER-DIRECTOR, PERU
“It is the same if you take the point of India, always males are very confident with their things where the females are being put down.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 20, INDIA
“It is the same if you take the point of India, always males are very confident with their things where the females are being put down.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 20, INDIA
“All three [characters] are white and it’s this coming of age movie. I think, I also read an article on this so I’m a bit biased but a lot of these coming of age movies are about white young people.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 25, NETHERLANDS, DISCUSSING THE FILM THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER, 2012
“I think people with different backgrounds [they] could do that better…Because we know people come from rich backgrounds, people come from poor backgrounds... So, if you pull these people together you can get a real thing.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 19, UGANDA
Their concerns are not unfounded: in the films studied for this report not only are female characters less prominent than male characters, the analysis also revealed a lack of ethnic diversity in the heroes, heroines, villains and secondary characters on our screens: nearly half (47%) of all characters in the top-grossing films of 2018 were white, the largest ethnic group by a wide margin.
There are regional variations with the top-grossing films in Asia having more Southeast Asian, Indian and other Asian characters than films in other regions while the top-grossing films in North America (63%) and Africa (62%) had more white characters than films in other regions.
The lack of diversity is further compounded when it comes to the sexuality of characters in the top-grossing films of 2018. Very few characters, only one percent, are portrayed as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, or queer.
“There is one black woman character but, I think, other than that, all female and male characters are white. They are all typically or conventionally attractive, all quite skinny. They all have their own cars and everything. So, they are all stereotypical, I guess, middle class, white and straight.”
GIRL, 17, CANADA, DISCUSSING THE FILM TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, 1999
Percentage of characters by ethnicity and region*
Men lead, women follow
Across our 19-country survey an overwhelming 94% of respondents believe that women in leadership are treated less well because of their gender.38
The film analysis however is less clear cut: in the workplace and the community although there are nearly twice as many male leaders on screen as female, women leaders are in fact more respected and portrayed as more likeable, intelligent and effective. The one thing they are not is more visible.
“Of course, it hurts me because… even if I know I could be a leader, I won’t do it because I see it is just for men, not for women. So that affects me. I’ll have to sit back and watch men doing it, even though I am capable of doing it too.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 22, UGANDA
It seems a little counterintuitive, but in a world where female leaders of countries are still fairly rare, across the top-grossing films men and women are equally likely to be shown as leaders of their country.39 However, here it is the men who come across as more effective and more respected: on screen, women presidents and prime ministers are ineffectual – not really up to the job.
It is only at family level where the films analysed show women in the majority as leaders – 18% compared to 13%. The family remains securely a female domain: here women are shown as better leaders, more intelligent, more likeable, more effective, harder-working and equally likely to be respected as male leaders.
The prevalence of women leaders at home fits with cultural stereotypes of the female caregiver but the films do show that the idea of a male “head of the household” is on the wane. However, not without a struggle: no male family leaders are portrayed as experiencing sexual harassment, 5% of female leaders are.
Interestingly “only” 5% of the female characters portrayed in leadership positions are shown as experiencing sexual harassment which again contrasts with the results from our 19-country survey where 93% of the young women believe that women across all areas of leadership experience sexual harassment or “unwanted physical contact.” Are the films we watch ignoring a major issue that young women are only too aware of?
As we have seen overall in these films’ characters, there are also issues of diversity in the characterisation of female leaders: of the 60 women portrayed as leaders nearly half, 48%, are white; very few are Hispanic/Latinx, Southeast Asian or Indian and none of the female leaders in the top-grossing films of 2018 are from the Middle East. Only one of the 60 female leaders in the top-grossing films of 2018 is LGBTQI+ – a bisexual woman.
Photo: Pixabay
What Girls say
reflections on the stories being told
Photo: Plan International
What do girls want from the films and TV programmes they watch and what are they getting? The conversations we had with our interviewees were revealing. They chose the films that they wanted to discuss, often because the characters in them were interesting and inspirational even though they acknowledged a lack of diversity in the characters overall and an assumption of superiority in many of the male ones.
“When he was investigating the case he would never take a step back but he wants his wife to take her step back…that shows that he has superiority over her… It shows masculine behaviour, he shows authority over his wife. She needs to compromise around her career but he does not.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 20, INDIA, DISCUSSING THE FILM VIKRAM VEDHA, 2017
Despite the presence of these stereotypical male characters most interviewees said that their chosen female characters were a positive representation of women: intelligent, determined, confident, fierce and independent.
“She shows she doesn’t need a man in her life. She wants to be powerful. She has a good job, also her work is not typical in Senegal for a woman, it is work for men because she works building houses.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 23, SENEGAL
Their favourite female characters were role models who they thought acted in ways that were different from both society’s expectations of women and the usual representations of women in entertainment media.
“Hermione is determined, she’s intelligent and smart and for me she does not act as society wants girls or women to act.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 22, SENEGAL, DISCUSSING HARRY POTTER FILMS
“She’s really confident in herself. She gets a little bit angry when she is faced with people who are kind of ignorant or patronising and misogynistic… I think they’ve done a really good job of making a female character who has her own personality and her own characteristics that don’t necessarily fit with how we usually see women.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 17, CANADA, DISCUSSING THE FILM TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, 1999
Overall, however, interviewees also recognised that these role models were quite rare, with a number of female characters reflecting stereotypical behaviours or traits, including being caring and respectful.
“Her main characteristic is that she’s really good to other people and she has good behaviour… especially to her boss.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 21, VIETNAM, DISCUSSING HER PRIVATE LIFE, TV SERIES, 2019
They also noticed that, particularly in terms of image and appearance, female characters tended to stick to established conventions and even those described as demonstrating non-gender stereotypical behaviour, often conform to notions of beauty and femininity in their looks.
“So, the character’s name is Black Widow and well, she has, you know, the body structure that supposedly every woman would like to have. She has fair skin, green eyes and red hair. Well, she is definitely not very feminine. Especially when she gets involved in the battle because she is very… fierce and she fights like she was any other guy, and so that is not typically very feminine.”
GIRL, 17, PERU, DISCUSSING THE FILM THE AVENGERS, 2018
“But one characteristic I think that is quite different is probably the fact that she’s brave and continues to do things that people aren’t 100% accepting of… I do think that her appearance is pretty stereotypical with the brown hair… and a slim body and all of that.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 18, CANADA, DISCUSSING THE FILM BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, 2017
Men take charge, women look nice:
on screen stereotypes
“In all the movies I see the girls need help from the male or the boys. And girls don’t end up achieving, but boys end up achieving what they want in the movies.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 19, UGANDA
In other words, outside their chosen films, the interviewees reported stereotypical portrayals of women and girls often in traditional domestic roles.
“Women and girls in general are taking care of the household and looking nice and sort of like… just doing the basic things that people expect a female to do. I don’t really see women doing anything outside the stereotype…”
YOUNG WOMAN, 18, CANADA
Consequently, as some interviewees noted, there are fewer women in leading roles: even when women and girls are given more prominent roles, they are often secondary to the man – his romantic interest for example – and lack depth of character.
“It’s a rarity to find a movie where it’s an all-female cast or mostly female cast, usually the women are just additions and for the most part as a romantic interest. They can easily be taken out of the movie and the movie will do just fine.”
GIRL, 17, CANADA
“Yes, in all the movies that I have seen that I have watched… when it comes to a girl or female character its always about her love life story or love story or something related to her marriage.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 21, VIETNAM
Other girls and young women from Canada and the Netherlands discussed the sometimes quite subtle, sexual objectification of women in entertainment media which focuses on appearance and ranges through nakedness to cat-calling and staring.
“A lot of the times we see men objectifying women in [TV] shows… we often see women walking and a man watching her as she walks away, that’s a very common scene we see in movies and shows... and things like that sort of just add to the discrimination and this unequal power balance.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 18, CANADA
Other interviewees noted that this “unequal power balance” means that female characters are not shown, or rarely shown, as leaders, or in leadership positions.
“Yeah! Men are in more leadership posts than women. Let me say, even other movies that I watch, it’s very hard to watch a movie saying that the president… is a woman, he’s a man! So, I think men are taking charge.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 19, UGANDA
“They don’t show women in leadership, and they don’t show women as role models, they just show them as sort of the followers of men, in a sense.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 18, CANADA
Photo: Plan International
A number of them picked up the theme of how entertainment media mirrors reality.
“Because it’s also what we see in the real world today as well. Like right now… females aren’t in the top leadership positions almost anywhere in the world, and... even female representation in politics is much lower than men, and I think that sort of translates onto our entertainment. And I think it creates this vicious cycle.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 18, CANADA
“Actually, that’s how it has been. I’ve been seeing this all the way from my childhood, seeing that women are not given the opportunity to speak.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 19, UGANDA
And according to one interviewee, when women are given leading roles in films there is generally a backlash from the public.
“So, in Captain Marvel… it came out recently and it’s one of the first superhero movies where it’s just a female other than Wonder Woman and she really has this quality of character and she’s incredible and it’s a role model for so many girls. [But] Everyone is talking about how she is controlling, and other people are saying her character is too much but, when we have these male characters in those position of power, they are applauded… These are the characters we like to see in men on film but when they are portrayed in women, we get uncomfortable.”
GIRL, 17, CANADA
Every Picture Tells a Story:
it’s not just the movies
Entertainment media is only part of that story. Girls and young women are also bombarded by images – on advertising hoardings, in shopping centres, along the roads – invading all aspects of their daily lives as they go to school, college or work.
“Advertisements are the mirrors of society because those that do not reflect reality are meaningless. Advertisements tell us what society expects from women.”
YOUNG WOMAN, JAPAN
Do these images tell the same story as the entertainment media we are analysing, portraying women as secondary characters, giving them domestic roles and concentrating on what they look like rather than what they think or say?
To find out, groups of girls and young women from five different countries – the Dominican Republic, India, Japan, Senegal, and South Sudan – collected and talked about 108 advertisements.42
This is what they found:
- Women’s bodies are used to sell products
- Girls have to be pretty
- Men are more intelligent than women
- A woman’s place is in the home
- Leadership is for men.
“I have learned that most products are advertised using girls’ pictures.”
YOUNG WOMAN, SOUTH SUDAN
Young women in all five countries were quick to assess that, overall, the adverts they saw demonstrated that the bodies of women and girls were being used to sell products, even where the image of a woman bore no actual relation to the product being sold.
“The girl is ready to put forward her beauty not her personality and her human qualities.”
YOUNG WOMAN, SENEGAL
Photo: Plan International
Media Matters:
“If you can see it, you can be it”43
This is the motto of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, and signals the scale of impact that media has. The findings from all the research for this project confirm that media in general, and entertainment media in particular, has considerable impact, for both good and bad, on the girls and young women watching.
For some of our interviewees, their chosen movie provided a positive role model, with a few describing the main characters as particularly inspiring. This power needs to be put to wider use.
“When I was younger some of my friends called me Hermione… I think that by reading it [Harry Potter] when I was a kid and watching the movie it influenced my personality… First by being ambitious, to say to myself ok that I do not want to be like a woman or like a girl who does what boys want her to do but that people see me as a human.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 22, SENEGAL
“Actually, this movie inspired me a lot. First, the girls came from a different background, they had a strong relationship, that friendship… They could help each other to see that the other one succeeds and see that no one is left out.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 19, UGANDA, DISCUSSING THE FILM SUMMER FOREVER, 2015
Others spoke about the role that films have in entrenching gender stereotypes, defining, for both girls and boys, what they come to accept, as normal.
“If through all the years you watch a lot of movies and shows about women who start a family, and who are looking for a man and want to marry, and all the guys are watching movies where the guy has to be a hero and has to save others ... you begin to think in stereotypical ways about how a man should be and how a woman should be. And I think that also has an effect, in the end, on behaviour.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 25, NETHERLANDS
“Girls are seen in cooking, are seen in farming…. And the men are seen in big pictures. It means that even a young girl will grow up saying that actually… I’m to be a cleaner, I’m to be in a kitchen!”
YOUNG WOMAN, 19, UGANDA
“They [media] have a lot of influence on how our society functions… First for the young women and girls, and for all the women, it makes them lacking in confidence and also thinking that all the stereotypes in their lives are true and unconsciously they will accept [them].”
YOUNG WOMAN, 19, SENEGAL
Across all the participating countries, girls and young women strongly believed that when they cannot see women as leaders on screens or cannot identify positive role models, they lose confidence and ambition.
“I think it might have negative impact on young women, because they may think they are not really a good fit for leadership roles, for example. And they may think that they don’t need to try hard in their career and just live a normal life and just stay at home and take care of their children. They don’t need to have like big ambitions.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 21, VIETNAM
“Definitely there’s an impact because indirectly the movies are telling women that they are not able to take leadership roles in the same way that men can.”
GIRL, 17, PERU
Young women also spoke about how lack of diversity in the media means this effect is amplified for women of colour.
“I guess for women of colour it’s even more difficult to find a good example. I think especially for women of colour and for girls of colour, if you don’t have a good example or a strong example [of women in leadership]… you probably would have question marks there about whether you can make it to the top.”
YOUNG WOMAN, 23, NETHERLANDS
“My mother says, ‘If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.’ I remember a TV show called North of 60 that we would tune in every week to see Tina Keeper, who played a cop. She was a contemporary indigenous woman playing a character who wasn’t a one- dimensional stereotype. It meant a lot for me as a young girl to see a woman like her on the television screen.”
ELLE-MÁIJÁ TAILFEATHERS, 34,
WRITER-DIRECTOR-PRODUCER-ACTOR, CANADA