Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media

Seed & Spark: The Revolution Will Be Streamed: Why Underrepresented Communities Need to Find, Fund, and Forge the Streaming Media Landscape

The statistics are startling, but the silver lining is promising: The conditions that brought women to the forefront in early film now exist in streaming media. Now is the time for marginalized communities to claim their most significant share yet of the media landscape by finding and funding streaming projects and investing in/forming streaming media companies.

This is a guest post by Kathleen Wallace.

Being a woman in and around the entertainment industry can feel like being in an unhealthy relationship: They’re just not that into us.

It wasn’t always this way. According to Dr. Jane Gaines, a film professor at Columbia University and one of the editors of the Women Film Pioneers Project, women in the film industry in America between 1916 and 1923 were more powerful than in any other business. In fact, in 1923, the number of women-owned production companies outnumbered those owned by men.

AliceGuyBlache — Alice Guy Blache, filmmaking pioneer, film studio owner, director of over 1,000 movies including some with interracial casts.

LoisWeber_BehindCamera — Lois Weber, silent film actress, screenwriter, director, producer, bane of censors; founded her own movie studio in 1917.

Fast forward 90 years to 2013, and only 23 percent of producers and a stunningly mere 7 percent of film directors are women (Geena Davis Institute on Gender In Media).

Sobering statistics about women in film.

When the moving image was uncharted territory, roles were less defined, which left greater room for minorities to take on more responsibility and to have more of a voice. According to Dr. Gaines, to meet the “booming demand” for fiction films between 1895 and 1925, “Women were given many, many more chances to direct and produce.”

The better part of a century later, streaming media outlets present an unprecedented demand for content. For example, in 2013, the average time spent on digital surpassed the time spent watching television. Soon mobile viewing will surpass digital viewing. Also unprecedented is the access content creators have to distribution via streaming media. And thanks to the advent of crowd-funding, the financial barrier to filmmaking is lowered and audiences have greater access to filmmakers and therefore greater say in what media is produced. What a time to be both a filmmaker and an audience member!

Digital has overtaken TV and mobile on on track to overtake digital.

History teaches us, though, that this golden time will not last. In the 1920s and 1930s, as the film industry matured and companies figured out how to monetize films, underrepresented communities were squeezed out. Streaming is still, just as film was a century ago, the new frontier of media, but the “Streaming-TV Gold Rush,” as deemed by New York Magazine, is on: HBO announced recently that it will offer a streaming-only service. Lionsgate and Tribeca Enterprises (which runs the Tribeca Film Festival) announced the creation of a subscription VOD service. And it’s been over a year since Jason Kilar, ex-Hulu CEO, and Richard Tom, ex-Hulu CTO, announced the creation of their company, Vessel, a premium streaming platform specifically for short-form video content.

Deep pockets are searching for ways to make money in digital media. And the money is there to be found; earlier this year, digital ad revenues surpassed television ad revenue. The question is, when the big companies do find the money, what will happen to the level of diversity we enjoy in streaming media now?

This is not to say that studio executives are maliciously excluding underrepresented groups. Studio executives just aren’t that into us, so they don’t see as great a need to represent us. As Justin Simien, the director of the movie Dear White People (which incidentally was crowd-funded), said in a recent NPR interview, “It’s taken as given that a white cast represents everyone.” Organizations like the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media are drawing strong attention to the issue, but the statistics on equal representation are still depressing.

With streaming media, we don’t have to see ourselves through someone else’s lens anymore. And if we take the reins of streaming media now while the gold rush is on, we can help ensure that it stays that way.

Here are three steps to take those reins:

First, find streaming content that speaks to you. There is seemingly limitless content on the big platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. There are also smaller companies like Seed&Spark, which cater to independent filmmakers. This company definitely harkens back to the early days of film: Seed&Spark is a female-lead company helps filmmakers fundraise as well as distribute their films, and 58 percent of the projects crowd-funding in their studio have women in prominent positions. (Full disclosure: I am currently crowd-funding my own web series through Seed&Spark. It’s called Settling Up.)

Second, when you find a project you like, support it. Throw money behind it. It doesn’t have to be a lot; truly every bit helps. Then spread the word. A Facebook post or tweet to your followers helps raise the project’s profile. Large numbers of both donors and followers signal to the streaming studios to come – like Vessel – that there is an underrepresented audience out there craving more content tailored to them.

Supporting projects also helps you build a relationship with your favorite streaming filmmakers, which helps ensure their projects’ longevity, since funding for streaming is still largely grassroots-based. “Relationships have made the most successful web series what they are today,” says Amy Kersten, an independent streaming producer whose work centers on women and women’s issues. When you subscribe to a series, when you post about an indie VOD film, when you comment on a video, you are creating dialogue between yourself and the filmmaker which helps ensure content is of the people. (Again, full disclosure, Amy is producing and co-directing my web series.)

Third, make streaming media yourself or get involved in a streaming media company. If this last one is for you – and it may not be – I strongly urge you to go for it. Underserved communities need more representation behind the camera as well as behind the studio desk. My web series, Settling Up, is the first streaming media I’ve created, and I’ve learned tons along the way – made plenty of mistakes, too. But at the end of the day, I’m telling stories that have gone untold for too long, and I’m very proud that our female to male ratio on the crew ranges between 2:2 and 4:1.

It’s media for women, by women. And I’m definitely into that. Long may it last!

__________________________________________

Kathleen Wallace is a NYC-based writer-producer-actor. Her web series, Settling Up, premieres in early 2015. She works with Amios Theater Company and Barefoot Theater Company, teaches fitness and public speaking, and is founder and Chief Cape Advocate of Be A Superhero Day, a day of public service. Kathleen holds degrees from Yale and the National Theater Conservatory and certificates from multiple schools in Germany. This winter she appears as Amanda in Private Lives at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia.

20 Facts Everyone Should Know About Gender Bias in Movies

To discuss their findings, the Institute hosted its second annual Global Symposium on Gender in Media, which I attended. The primary response I had was, how is it possible that people, especially people in this industry, remain unaware of these facts and what they mean? My second was, how do we get this information to audiences who live with the effects of this bias, but are demonstrably unaware?

This guest post by Soraya Chemaly previously appeared at Th e H uffington Post and is cross-posted with permission.

A new study, Gender Bias Without Borders, was released by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media this recently. Conducted by Dr. Stacy Smith and a team at USC’s Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism, it looks at 120 films in the 10 most profitable film markets, globally. These films, rated G, PG, or PG-13.5 or their equivalents, were compared to similar films in the U.S. A category for U.S./UK collaboration was created since it was so common. The U.S. ranks consistently low in almost every metric.

Studies, other studies, show that everyday sexism is invisible to most people. One form that sexism takes, including vis-a-vis media, is that people overestimate the presence of women and their speech. It happens everywhere. It’s not that we think women are necessarily apparent or speaking as much as men, but that we expect them to be, relatively speaking, invisible and not speaking, so, by comparison, any appearance and speech is “too much.” This says a lot about status and mainstream cultural assumptions about social roles and of power.

Despite decades of research, it is apparent that we are, as a culture, so used to women being marginal that we don’t even notice. Women, as Davis points out, are only 17 percent of the people in movie crowd scenes, and yet viewers assume they are almost equally represented. That 17 percent number is super interesting, since it is also roughly the percentage of women found in leadership positions in government and business.

With very small changes, the ratio of men to women in film has remained fundamentally unchanged since 1946. As Davis put it, at this rate, “It will be 700 years before we reach parity” in U.S. media. And that parity is crucially important, not the least of which is because, as she explained, “Eighty percent of media we consume is made in the United States. We are responsible for exporting these images of girls and women to the world.” It is not a pretty picture.

20 Facts About Gender and Film in 2014

Read them and weep.

And then share widely.

Globally, there are 2.24 male characters for every 1 female character.

Out of a total of 5,799 speaking or named characters 30.9 percent were female, 69.1 percent male.

Films for children had similar ratios, with only 29.2 percent having female protagonists.

Less than a quarter of films surveyed (23.3 percent) had a female lead or co-lead.

The U.S./UK hybrids and Indian films were in the bottom third for gender-balance, with less than a quarter of speaking roles going to female characters. In the U.S./U.K. hybrids, 23.6 percent and in Indian films, 24.9 percent.

These on-screen ratios mirror behind the camera realities. Out of 1,452 filmmakers whose gender was identifiable, 20.5 percent were female compared to 79.5 percent who are male.

Females are 7 percent of directors, 19.7 percent of writers, and 22.7 percent of producers.

France has the worse gender ratio, 9.1 men to 1 woman.

Brazil has the best, 1.7 men to 1 woman. The U.S.? 3.4 men to 1 woman.

When women direct films there are 6.8 percent more women in them. When women are screen writers, there are 7.5 percent more women. As the report points out, however, this may not be a good thing. “This explanation reflects the old age, “write what you know.” On the other hand, women maybe given these projects to write and direct that include more female characters. This second and latter explanation is more problematic, as it restricts the range of open directing and writing opportunities given to women.”

How gender is represented is also consistently problematic, particularly when you consider the influence media has on children’s imagination and self-conception. Female characters are more than twice as likely to be wearing sexy and sexualizing clothes (24.8 percent vs. 9.4 percent).

Female characters are more than twice as likely to be skinny (38.5 percent vs. 15.7 percent).

Female characters are more than twice as likely to be either partially or fully naked (24.2 percent vs. 11.5 percent).

In films, comments made by characters that refer to appearance are directed at women at a rate of FIVE times that of comments directed at men.

For films with fictional characters for younger children, in which the characters were aged 13-39, females are equally disproportionately sexualized. Even worse, however, is that in kids films, female characters are even more likely than in adult films to be thin.

In the U.S., for example, although women make up 46.3 percent of the workforce, they are only 23.2 percent of characters who work on film. This is one of the largest representational differences among all the countries measured. Needless to say, nowhere were women overrepresented as working for pay.

India had the smallest discrepancy in depictions of work: women make up 25.3 percent of the off screen workforce and 15.6 percent on the onscreen one.

When researchers looked at characters who were executives, as a marker of leadership representation, women made up 13.9 percent. There were not enough of them to have country breakdowns. While the study notes that “Across the global sample, occupational power is at odds with female participation,” that number, 13.9 percent is actually not too far off the mark. In the U.S. 17 percent of executives in the Top 100 companies are women, internationally that number is 24 percent. Women make up only 3 percent of CEOs globally.

Men are much more likely to be seen as attorneys and judges (13 to 1), academics (16 to 1), doctors and medical practitioners (5 to 1). Just three female characters were represented as political leaders with power. One didn’t speak. One was an elephant. The last was Margaret Thatcher.

Men were represented in STEM jobs area at a ratio of 7 to one. In the U.S., where women make up 24 percent of the STEM workforce, men made up 87.5 percent of STEM job workers.

I am grateful for organizations like the ones that came together (the UNWomen and the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored this work) to do this study, but I am tired of reading statistics like this.

Executives at the meeting I attended, women, expressed being “startled” by the data and I had to ask, “How is that possible in 2014?” Men have disproportionate industry potential to be change agents. Where are they? The room I sat in was 90 percent women. Media and entertainment management, like most other industries’, is lacking in diversity. Men with influence and the ability to raise these questions and do something about them probably strive, as individuals, to be good parents to their kids and make sure their daughters are healthy, happy, educated and ambitious. Not doing anything about this problem, from an institutional perspective, undoes all of that effort. The argument that there is some kind of benign “neutral” position is misguided. Same goes for parents.

Boys and men are done a massive disservice from these media portrayals as well. The flip side of these biased portrays contribute to inhumane, unrealistic stereotypes about masculinity based on control, violence, dominance and the active erasure of empathy as an acceptable emotion. A narrow, frequently violent, power-over-others male heroism comes at a very high price for everyone. As filmmaker Abigail Disney, a panelist, asked, along with women, there is another notable absence, “Where are the men who solve problems by thinking?”

Doing nothing perpetuates a discriminatory and harmful status quo. When progressive movie stars, the most prominent and well-paid being men, sit at a table, when liberal-minded executives review scripts, when open-minded producers are hiring — why is this not front and center? Davis recommends two very simple steps when scripts are being reviewed: change “he” to “she” for characters and make sure crowd scenes are gender balanced.

“Film executives were raised on this media, too. Just as women are underrepresented on screen they are missing in the real world,” explains Davis. These are not unrelated realities.

You may at this point be saying, “It’s all about the money.” Except, it’s not. Films featuring women in meaningful roles make more money. What does that leave us with? Consumer education. When will we draw a line? It’s not just about withholding money, but actively supporting women filmmakers and movies that feature diversity, fully dimensional female characters such as those featured in the annual Athena Film Festival.

Many made the point that, for the most part, moviegoers are unaware of the biases. Consumers are not going to theaters thinking about gender or how its representation impacts their and their children’s lives, boys and girls both. Media is how we train girls and women to have low expectations and train boys to have high ones. Girls to exhibit submissiveness and self-objectification, boys to express dominance and control. This isn’t a passive process.

“Filmmakers make more than just movies,” explains Smith. “They make choices. The choice could be for gender equality.” There is no excuse for not having this information and using it.

Researchers took pains to explain the limitations of their study and make good recommendations for improvement, further courses of inquiry and necessary steps that can be taken to address what is clearly a significant problem in our story-telling, especially for children.

What can you do? Share these facts, talk about them with educators, coaches, family, friends. Family friendly films are among the biggest problems. Talk to your kids. Don’t let this everyday sexism go unremarked upon. Vote with your wallet. Tell your local theatre to improve their programming.

The representation of gender in these films shapes imaginations and identity, aspirations and ambition. These depictions teach girls and boys about how culture sees them: their worth, their relative value, the roles they “should” play. Girls and women, infinitely diverse in their interests, appearance, ambition, ability, aspirations, make up more than 50 percent of the human population, but you would never know any of this watching our top grossing films. Really, how can we continue telling these fundamentally destructive stories to children?

Soraya L. Chemaly writes about feminism, gender and culture. Her work appears in The Huffington Post, The Feminist Wire, BitchFlicks, Fem2.0, Alternet and Feministe among other media. She considers it a major accomplishment that the people in her house dance with abandon. Follow on Tumblr, Facebook, Feminism’s Fantastic, Twitter @schemaly

What Country’s Film Industry Has the Best Gender Equity?

The study from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and a group of partner organizations analyzed 120 films from the 10 countries with the most profitable film industries in the world. On average, women don’t fare much better in films internationally than they do in the United States: only 30 percent of characters with speaking parts or names are women. However, the cinematic gender balance varies greatly between countries. In Korea, for example, 50 percent of leading parts went to women while women played only 10 percent of leading roles in Russian films.

French film "Blue is the Warmest Color" centered on compelling female stories—but behind the camera, men outnumber women in the French industry nine to one. Film still from Sundance. — French film *Blue is the Warmest Color* centered on compelling female stories—but behind the camera, men outnumber women in the French industry nine to one. Film still from Sundance.

This guest post by Sarah Mirk previously appeared at Bitch Media and is cross-posted with permission.

We know that women woefully make up only 30 percent of speaking roles in American films. But a new study looks at how women fare in cinema internationally.

One thing that’s frustrating about this disparity is not just that women aren’t reflected in our media but that films featuring women in speaking roles are often better movies. When a film has few women in speaking roles, that’s usually a red flag to me that it’s a poorly written film. That was backed up by American box office revenues last year: major films that passed the Bechdel test made far more money, overall, than films that failed to have two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than men. I’d be excited about a plan for American theaters to follow the example of a few theaters in Sweden that post whether a film passes the Bechdel test—then I’d be able to know which films to skip.

When thinking about gender representation in media, it’s essential to look at who is making our media. Female directors are more likely to work on projects with more women on screen. There’s no country that has gender balance behind the scenes in the film industry, but some do better than others. At the bottom of the pile is France, where male directors, writers, and producers outnumber women nine to one. Brazil is the most equitable overall, but the UK gets the special distinction of being the only film market where women make up a majority of film writers.

The study also looked at how women are portrayed on screen, including what jobs they hold. Discussions of how women are portrayed in film are endless, but I think the most interesting part of this analysis is its number-crunching on the actual jobs women hold in films. The researchers looked at the number of characters who hold jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields and other male-dominated careers. The results are telling. In the United States for example, women hold 24 percent of jobs in STEM fields. But onscreen, only 12.5 percent of characters with jobs in STEM fields are women. Women are also absent onscreen from high-level political positions: only 9.5 percent of high-ranking politicians in films internationally are women. These onscreen representations are important because they offer role models for the viewer—not always good role models, of course, but even if women are playing nefarious scientists or politicians plotting global domination, people sitting in the audience understand that women are a vital presence in the laboratories and capitol buildings of the world. As the study notes, “Filmmakers make more than just movies, they make choices. Those choices could be for balance, for less sexualization, and for more powerful female roles. The choice could be for gender equality.”

Related Reading: Sweden is Now Rating Films for Gender Bias.

Sarah Mirk is Bitch Media‘s online editor. Right now, she’s really into watching Elisabeth Moss in Top of the Lake.