{"id":269105,"date":"2013-07-09T20:06:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T20:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2013\/07\/09\/lyden-you-commissioned-a-dozen-studies-on-women\/"},"modified":"2013-07-09T20:06:43","modified_gmt":"2013-07-09T20:06:43","slug":"lyden-you-commissioned-a-dozen-studies-on-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2013\/07\/09\/lyden-you-commissioned-a-dozen-studies-on-women\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

LYDEN:<\/b> You commissioned a dozen studies on women in media from the Annenberg School at USC. Some of the figures just really boggled the imagination when you think that women are half of all moviegoers. If we didn\u2019t go to the movies, maybe this would make more sense. But we turn out in droves.<\/p>\n

DAVIS:<\/b> I know. It really does boggle the mind. In family films and kids television shows, for every one female character, there are three male characters. But lest people think that it\u2019s all bad news, we were able to see an increase in the percentage of female characters in family films, such that if we add female characters at the rate we have been for the past 20 years, we will achieve parity in 700 years.<\/p>\n

(LAUGHTER)<\/p>\n

DAVIS:<\/b> And my institute, we have dedicated ourselves to cutting that in half. And we will not rest until it\u2019s only 350 years.<\/p>\n

LYDEN:<\/b> Why is this the case?<\/p>\n

DAVIS:<\/b> My theory is that since all anybody has seen when they are growing up is this big imbalance that the movies that they\u2019ve watched are about, let\u2019s say, five-to-one as far as female presence is concerned. That\u2019s what starts to look normal. And let\u2019s think about in difference segments of society – 17 percent of cardiac surgeons are women, 17 percent of tenured professors are women. It just goes on and on. And isn\u2019t that strange that that\u2019s also the percentage of women in crowd scenes in movies? What if we\u2019re actually training people to see that ratio as normal so that when you\u2019re an adult, you don\u2019t notice?<\/p>\n

LYDEN:<\/b> I wonder what the impact is of all of this lack of female representation.<\/p>\n

DAVIS:<\/b> We just heard a fascinating and disturbing study where they looked at the ratio of men and women in groups. And they found that if there\u2019s 17 percent women, the men in the group think it\u2019s 50-50. And if there\u2019s 33 percent women, the men perceive that as there being more women in the room than men.<\/p>\n

LYDEN:<\/b> Oh, my goodness.<\/p>\n

DAVIS:<\/b> So is it possible that 17 percent women has become so comfortable and so normal that that\u2019s just sort of unconsciously expected?<\/p>\n

LYDEN:<\/b> Why else, Geena Davis, do these kinds of disparities matter?<\/p>\n

DAVIS:<\/b> What we\u2019re in effect doing is training children to see that women and girls are less important than men and boys. We\u2019re training them to perceive that women take up only 17 percent of the space in the world. And if you add on top of that that so many female characters are sexualized, even in things that are aimed at little kids, that\u2019s having an enormous impact as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

NPR, \u201cCasting Call: Hollywood Needs More Women" [x<\/a>] (via mswyrr<\/a>)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LYDEN: You commissioned a dozen studies on women in media from the Annenberg School at USC. Some of the figures just really boggled the imagination when you think that women are half of all moviegoers. If we didn\u2019t go to the movies, maybe this would make more sense. But we turn out in droves. DAVIS: … <\/p>\n

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