What if today’s media messages included more positive female role models and less hyper-sexualization of women?
by Betsy Speer
Actresses Geena Davis (more info HERE) and Dame Helen Mirren (more info HERE) and Keira Knightly (more info HERE) have recently spoken out on the importance of female parity in the film and television industry, specifically, about the need to increase female writers, directors, and producers in media who have the power and ability to change the message.
One successful film showing positive female role models in healthy power positions can reach millions. Actress, Dame Helen Mirren says,
"I hope films can address ideas and thoughts that seep into the culture and push society forward. It's incredibly important to the way we form our thoughts and understanding of how life is and how to behave."
The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media says that females make up 50% of the world's population but did you know that in children's programming there is only one girl in every four children? They want to improve children's programing to offer girls and boys a more positive perspective of females who have positions of power, careers in science, etc. which will plant seeds for future parity in the world.
Academy Award winning actress Geena Davis and ARC Entertainment announced the launch of the Bentonville Film Festival (BFF), a one-of-a-kind inaugural event designed to champion women and diversity in film. Healthy Media for Youth Act. partnered with University of Southern California, The Rockefeller Foundation and UN Women.
Dame Helen Mirren has said that female actors still find it more difficult than their male counterparts to find work in film and television.
“I hope films can address ideas and thoughts that seep into the culture and push society forward. It’s incredibly important to the way we form our thoughts and understanding of how life is and how to behave.”
Keira Knightley spoke out over the lack of women working behind the camera in Hollywood, in a recent interview. The actress, nominated for an Oscar for her role in The Imitation Game, has criticized the one-sided nature of the industry and queried why the male journey is so consistently prioritized.
“I think it is interesting that for women in film, the problems they face are generally put into the sphere of home and family and not into the workplace. Where are the female stories?” she said to Violet magazine.
“Where are the directors, where are the writers? It’s imbalanced, so given that we are half the cinema-going public, we are half the people [who] watch drama or watch anything else, where is that? … I think the pay [gap in the entertainment business] is a huge thing, but I’m actually more concerned over the lack of our voices being heard.”
“I don’t know what happened through the 1980s, 90s and noughties that took feminism off the table, that made it something that women weren’t supposed to identify with and were supposed to be ashamed of,” she said. “Feminism is about the fight for equality between the sexes, with equal respect, equal pay and equal opportunity. At the moment we are still a long way off that.”
In The Imitation Game, Knightley played mathematician Joan Clarke, who proved instrumental in the Enigma project during the second world war, and her unique journey was one that Knightley described as rare within Hollywood films.