7 Ways Women and Girls Are Stereotyped, Sexualized, and Underrepresented on Screen

New report highlights staggering gender disparities in film and TV—even children’s shows.

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

 

 

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