Geena Davis says gender bias begins in Children’s TV & Film

Last week in Sydney Geena Davis addressed an industry gathering with a look at the representation of women on screens, and highlighting how the issue of unconscious gender bias begins in children’s television and film.

“Nearly everything is made through the male gaze. A very disturbing study that came out last year showed girls as young as six years old have started to view themselves through the male gaze. They have self-sexualised as young as six. That’s really an indictment of us and just a shame,” she said.

“There’s no reason they shouldn’t be seeing half of their entertainment through the female gaze, through a variety of different lenses.”

8 months ago Screen Australia announced its biggest-ever funding initiative, Gender Matters, comprising 45 new female-led projects across television (16), online (11) and film (18), plus 13 business proposals.

“Gender Matters is the biggest initiative Screen Australia has ever taken on,” said Screen Australia’s Chief Operating Officer Fiona Cameron. “It has permeated every corner of our agency, from Program Operations who process every incoming application, to the Development Unit who assess every project and assist talent to develop stories and their careers, to Business & Audience who look after distribution funding for female-led projects under Better Deals.”

“Eight months since the Brilliant Stories and Brilliant Careers funding was announced, we’re seeing some clear trends emerge including an increase in applications from female led creative teams from 56% to 64% across all our programs. So we are heading in the right direction and we need a couple of years under our belt to influence production outcomes, particularly in the feature film sector where there is a much longer lead time.”

“Although I’m confident Gender Matters will reach its target agency wide, the biggest problem area is in feature film production. To that end, we are urging the industry to think about the makeup of their creative team early. If you come in for development or production funding with a project with an all-male team, you will struggle to convince us why that is appropriate in 2017.”

Amongst its achievements so far:

• Public Relations (television) will shortly deliver their polished first draft, and just released their concept video.
• Silver Lining (television) has been workshopped with Alice Bell (Puberty Blues) and Academy Award® nominee Luke Davies (Lion) has been attached as a script consult.
• Tales From Outer Suburbia (television) has already produced two incarnations of the pitch bible that were presented at Kidscreen (February 2017).
• Torn (television) has delivered a pilot script and budget, with Amanda Higgs joining as a consultant as the series prepares for the next phase of development.

You can read more on the interim update here.

Source: ABC