Women leaders speak out against internalized gender inequality
At the rate of social progress measured within a 20-year span, actor Geena Davis said women will achieve equal portrayal in movies and television within the next 700 years.
In the meantime, male casts outnumber their female cast members. There are three male-speaking characters for every female-speaking character in family-rated films.
This and other gender issues were discussed on Wednesday through a global webcast hosted by the Academy of Motion Pictures. This webcast was available for students from 106 countries, including around 40 people watching from Powers Ballroom.
The event was part of a series on leadership and gender equality hosted by PwC, a global accounting firm. After the webcast, there was a local panel of women leaders put together by PwC and CMU's School of Accounting so the audience could ask questions.
Five percent of company CEOs are female
Seven percent of Hollywood directors are female
Facts quoted from Geena Davis:
The male-to-female ratio is portrayed unrealistically on the big screen. In movies, group crowd-scenes have an average ratio of six men to one female.
"The vast majority of female movie characters are highly stereotyped, hypersexualized or both."
"Female characters in g-rated movies wear the same amount of sexually revealing clothing as females in r-rated movies."
"One of the most common occupations for females in g-rated movies is royalty. This is a nice gig if you can get it, it's just a little hard to land that job."
Few women actually have leadership roles. The University of Denver measured the positions of women in leadership and authority for the ten most important sectors of society. The average was 20 percent of those leaders were women.
"The percentage of women in the fictional workforce is far less than the real world." Women make up 50 percent of the workforce in the US, but 81 percent of jobs in movies are held by male characters in family-rated films.
Speakers for the global webcast included Dawn Hudson, Academy CEO, and Jennifer Nelson, director of two Kung Fu Panda movies.
Davis was the main speaker for the webcast and gave a presentation about her work through her research institute, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Her message was that women are taught from a young age to feel that they are less valuable than men.
"My institute has commissioned the largest amount of research ever done on gender depictions in the media and the results are stunning in a world that is half women," Davis said. "The message we send is that men and boys have far more value than women and girls."
Montcalm senior Kirsten Davenport said her big takeaway from the talk came from hearing the statistics about female CEOs and directors. Five percent of company CEOs and seven percent of directors are female.
"That was really crazy, it made me see there is something that needs to be changed," she said.
Davenport said she had thought about sexism in movies before, noticing certain types of movies are geared towards young girls.
"Disney movies, like 90 percent of the girl princess movies are about finding a husband," Davenport said.
After the webcast, a panel of local female leaders from CMU and PwC opened the floor for the audience to ask questions. Panelists discussed what it is like for women in the workforce and gave tips on how both men and women can strive to go beyond gender bias.
Women were encouraged to embrace their unique leadership styles, speak up and take initiative. Male leaders were encouraged to keep gender issues in mind, think of their loved ones who are female and try to take their female colleagues under their wing.
Panelist Veronica Stickler, PwC's Advisory Manager, said there are differences in roles, but many differences have less to do with abilities and more to do with old stereotypes.
Panel member Misty Bennet, management faculty at CMU, said it's easy to think issues with women's equality were fixed with the suffrage movement and other historical efforts.
"There really is a problem, and it's easy to think we fixed it, we did that whole women's equality think in the 60s," Bennet said. "But it's 2015, we don't have it."
