G-rated movies favor boys, a new study says
A study of the most popular G-rated movies of the past 15 years has found that three-quarters of the characters are male, raising concerns that Hollywood is inadvertently telling children that women are less important than men.
The survey, which will be unveiled tonight in Los Angeles by actress Geena Davis, analyzed the 101 top-grossing G-rated movies released between 1990 and 2004 and found that 75 percent of all characters were male, 72 percent of the speaking roles were male, and 83 percent of the characters in crowd scenes were male. The study, titled ''Where the Girls Aren't," analyzed 4,249 speaking characters in live-action and animated films made for children under the age of 11.
The study, which was done at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, was funded by See Jane, a program of the nonprofit Dads & Daughters that advocates for balance in gender representation in children's media. Davis, who has three young children, is the founder of See Jane.
''Girls take up half the space on the planet, but the entertainment boys and girls see from the youngest ages teaches that boys' stories are more important than girls'," Davis said in a telephone interview.
Because young children tend to watch the same videos over and over, the message is constantly reinforced, said Stacy L. Smith, the study's lead researcher. ''These unrealistic representations may powerfully influence young children," she said.
Davis said See Jane hopes to work with movie studios on the imbalance. She also said she hopes the results make parents aware but not paranoid. The study recommends that parents show their kids movies with gender diversity and talk to them about gender imbalances.
Joe Kelly, president of Dads & Daughters, pointed to the 1995 animated film ''Toy Story" as an example. ''It's a marvelous movie, funny, clever, and it has a really important message -- that it's possible for clashing personalities and values to find a way to work together toward a common goal," he said. But it also has only one female toy with a speaking part, Bo Peep.
When his daughters were younger, Kelly watched the movie many times, ''and I never even noticed." If he were to watch now with a 5- to 11-year-old, he would point out how lopsided it is: ''I notice that of all the talking toys, only one is a girl, and she doesn't say much. If Woody was a girl toy instead of a boy, do you think the movie would be different? If you were making a movie with talking toys, and half of them were boy toys and half of them were girls, what kind of movie would you make?"
A spokesman for
Davis -- who stars as the president of the United States in ABC's ''Commander in Chief" -- said she first became interested in gender role stereotypes after she starred in 1991's ''Thelma & Louise."
''It was remarkable to see the positive power those images had on women," said Davis, who grew up in Wareham and graduated from Boston University. When she began to watch videos with her daughter, Alizeh, she found herself counting the male and female characters. ''I was struck by how few female characters there were that I would potentially want her to identify with."
Happily, she said, Alizeh's favorite video these days is ''Mulan," one of only seven on the list of 101 singled out for balanced gender roles.
