We all know Geena Davis — the iconic actor has played the most influential Hollywood roles, including Dottie Hinson in A League of Their Own, Thelma in Thelma & Louise and president MacKenzie Allen — the first female president on TV in Commander in Chief.
During her time as an A-lister, she garnered a heightened sense of awareness of how audiences and particularly women and girls would feel by seeing her in these roles.
That heightened awareness didn’t stop when she became a mother to a daughter and twin boys. When her children were young, she started watching children’s shows and saw something strange — she didn’t see many female characters.
How is this possible that we’re leaving out half of the population? she thought. Davis began asking her friends and colleagues. Nobody had the facts. She wanted to know if her observations were indicative of something else.
In 2004, she founded the The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Today, it remains the leading research institute working with the entertainment and media industry to achieve gender equality in family media and entertainment.
Initially, the Institute looked at children’s programming and the representation of all types of female characters, including female characters of colour or those with a disability.
According to Madeline Di Nonno, the CEO of the Institute, there wasn’t just a lack of diverse women on screens — there was also a lack of diverse female characters as decision makers, as directors, as producers, and writers across the content creation platforms.
“We’ve always looked at the intersection of many different dimensions and our research revealed there truly was a gender disparity, which no one had known about,” Di Nonno said. “We wanted to create opportunities so that everyone can see themselves on screen.”
Di Nonno spoke to Women’s Agenda to share her insight with what the Institute is doing within the industry to change the content of young creatives.
Di Nonno has been leading the advocacy, programs, research and strategic direction of the Institute for almost 14 years now, and she’s seen some big changes in women’s representation on screen.
“One of our mission goals we achieved was to reach gender parity for female lead characters in the largest grossing films back in 2020,” she said.
The Institute works with a range of leading content creators across studio and streaming platform to make sure that intersectional identities and their aspirations are being shown on the big screen.
Di Nonno mentions the See Jane 2019 report, which examined the top 25-rated children’s television programs watched by children aged 2-13, which found that male characters in children’s movies make up 67.2 per cent of leads, compared to 32.8 per cent female leads.
The report also found that female characters are six times more likely than male characters to be shown in revealing clothing.
Today, the Institute is still working on closing the gender parity for female lead characters in the content for families and children.
On Wednesday, Di Nonno will join Geena Davis in Melbourne at the Being Seen on Screen Conference — an exclusive day of conversations on gender representation and diversity on screens.
The conference will include a series of panel discussions with industry icons, including Sigrid Thornton OAM, Rachael Maza OAM, Pallavi Sharda and Dr Emma Fulu, Founder and Executive Director of The Equality Institute, as they talk about Aging on Screen, Bodies on Screen and the future of women on the big screen.
Di Nonno hopes the conference will propel the advocacy of the Institute to continue its fight for more people of colour in children’s programming, animation and animated programming.
“Aside from gender, we want to see the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, and gender and LGBTQIA,” Di Nonno said. “All these dimensions of the intersection have a long way to go when it comes to representation.”
“We’d like to see more characters of colour. It’s so important, given our population.”
The Institute is driving change through research, which in turn leads to advocacy and engagement with the leading content creators.
That data has been the key, according to Di Nonno, because it’s able to measure where the industry is heading, and where it needs to go.
“It’s really been the research and the data and having the facts that has driven progress and change,” she said.
After the research is conducted the Institute present it to leading creators and then measure any changes that occur.
“The focus is always on kind of the top of the call sheet,” she said. “Maybe they haven’t looked at the diversity of the supporting characters or maybe they haven’t looked at all the characters that are speaking.”
Di Nonno agrees that content providers have a moral obligation to be more conscious about how their project fits into the larger social, cultural narrative. For her, there’s a business imperative to delivering to diverse audiences.
Part of that involves creating a cohort of like-minded organisations that have shared values across various industries — including STEM. The latest example of this is a new initiative called #GirlsLeadSTEM, which aims to raise the voices of girls involved in STEM.
“We want to recognise the need to make sure that our children and particularly our girls are looking at STEM education and STEM careers,” Di Nonno said. “This is where a lot of the jobs are moving forward.”
“Technology is very, very important and so we have this aim to raise the voices of girls that are pursuing STEM education, and careers.”
It’s just one of several initiatives the Institute is working on. Research has been delayed due to the pandemic, and the theatrical industry is continuing to recover after being “completely annihilated,” according to Di Nonno, but things are looking optimistic.
“We have a number of projects and events that we’ll do throughout the year on certain topics, and there’s new research coming out,” she said. “We’re really, really excited about those initiatives.”
You can see Madeline Di Nonno and Geena Davis speak at the Being Seen Conference on Wednesday in Melbourne. You can find our more about The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media here or sign up for their newsletter, here.