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 the Oscar-winning actress and United Nations special envoy) 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:
Image credits: Walt Disney Pictures ; CBS ; HBO ; NBC ; Group W Productions ; 20th Century Fox ; TBS
