Geena Davis speaks on women's media roles

Actress Geena Davis speaks at American University in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 18, 2014. 

She spoke about gender equality in media, specifically children's television shows and movies.

 (Photo by Bryna Kramer)

“The media can be the cure to the problem it has created,” was the message about gender equality in Geena Davis's speech at American University on Oct. 18, 2014. The Academy Award winner and activist has spent the last 10 years studying the lack of gender equality in media, specifically in children's television shows and movies.

She established the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in 2007 to bring more awareness to this particular issue. Since then, this institute has completed the largest amount of research of any organization on gender roles and their importance in the media.

Davis was originally inspired after she noticed the lack of women compared to men while watching TV and movies with her young daughter. She told the audience that her first thought was “Surely in the 21^st century, we should be showing girls and boys in the sand box equally.” She realized that the gender equality problem might be even deeper then we imagined when she saw that nobody noticed the lack of women in TV and movies.

Davis said that as a result our media is saying that women are less important than boys in family movies.

She emphasized to the audience that this is not just a national problem. “The global landscape is no less bleak, ” she said.

Although this lack of representation continues to be an ongoing problem, Davis sees hope in the recent trend of stronger and more important female characters, especially in Disney movies such as “Tangled,” “Brave” and “Frozen.”

However, she warned the audience that both the industry and the public should not get too comfortable with women’s progress so far.

Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute and the moderator for the night, asked “What can we all do to help eliminate this?”

“Besides donate to my institute?” Davis said. “It's tough because it impacts all of us. But, change on the screen can make things look normal.”

Overall, students seemed to have a positive reaction to Davis's speech. Emily Peikin, a sophomore in attendance, said she left the speech inspired with ideas on how Davis could expand her research. “I would like to see how this compares to contemporary young adult literature considering the prevalence of strong female heroines such as 'The Hunger Games' and 'Harry Potter'”