New Study Says Women and Minorities are Just Decoration for Media

I stumbled across this article recently about the studies that actress Geena Davis’ Institute on Gender in Media has been reporting on and I was to be honest pretty shocked at some of the results. I guess that if as women we are only told to be certain things through television, magazines, and films that is all we will aspire to be. To see the Institutes full report check out http://www.seejane.org It’s no big revelation that women and minority actors have long struggled to land prominent roles in big-budget Hollywood fare. And entertainment and media’s oversexualization of women (even in Olympics coverage) has always been pretty damn bald-faced. But how about kids’ TV shows, or family movies? The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (founded in 2004 by Oscar-winning actress and United Nations special envoy Geena Davis) has published a new report (PDF) detailing the stereotypes, barriers, and straight-up exploitation that still define how badly women and girls are treated on screen. The study takes a deep dive into prime-time television, as well as children’s programming and family-friendly films. Women are scarcer in prime-time shows and family films, and those films depict “fewer women in prestigious occupational positions,” the study notes. “Females are not only missing from popular media, [but] when they are on screen, they seem to be there merely for decoration.” Check out some of the stunning stats below: