71% of Characters in Children’s Films are Male

[The Straight Story]

71% of Characters in Children’s Films are Male

Men not only dominate films for the general populace, but those for families and children as well. After studying G, PG and PG-13 rated movies over a 20-year period (1990-2009), researchers at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism concluded that men comprised 71% of all speaking roles, while women only had 29%. That’s a ratio of 2.42 to 1.

The shortage of women on screen even applied to extras, of whom only 17% percent were female. The study also found female characters were far more likely to be “hypersexualized” than men, and women tended to be younger than their male counterparts.

The study was funded by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media Research.

http://www.allgov.com/Controversies/ViewNews/71_Percent_of_Characters_in_Childrens_Films_are_Male_101216

[ananda]

1. Women in media have to be/look young and pornworthy.

The sexism and looksism is so widespread.

[Lance_Boyle]

2. and media = kids films?

Disney, Nickelodeon and others have an explicit goal of trying to appeal to boys more, after decades of princess this-and-that exclusively. The Geena Davis Institute (snort!) should maybe take their "findings" and run a comparison with data from 20 years ago. Of course they would probably take the pendulum swing as evidence that sexism is spreading exponentially in kids films, rather than evidence of studios discovering a market they'd neglected previously.