Interesting.

I noticed the other day that when a character is talked about but never seen or heard, she seems to have a much higher chance of being female:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unseen_Characters

Yes! Somebody is finally addressing this! I lurve I lurve I lurve it!

I remember when I was in high school looking for plays for our drama club to perform, it was damned near impossible to find a play with enough female roles for our mostly-female drama club. In one all-male play with 10 characters, we just had several girls take on the male characters. It was an interesting experience, and it emphasized to me the way women are just ignored out of lots of top feilds, despite enthusiasm and talent. People think of cooking as women's work, but top chefs are mostly male. Lots of other creative fields are full of women at the lower ranks, but topped out with men. What gives?

I thought more women watched tv anyways.

Gender imbalance on screen merely reflects the imbalance in society. It's not limited to television or G-rated movies.

Many movies I believe have a cast structure which is virtually all male except for one female which is generally the love interest of the main male character.

In those real-world roles that approximate the exciting roles which Hollywood enjoys portraying, such as lawyer, detective, and soldier, males are predominate. The same goes for peripheral roles in business. I'm not sure how one can demand equal gender representation in entertainment when there is no equal representation in reality.

Hey! I just found out there are whole movie genres devoted to women?

Something called a “chick flick�??? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_flick

Women need something like opera or desperate housewives or the view or sex in the city, or Buffy or Gilmore girls there aren’t any shows like that.

yes, right hujo - because sex in the city, buffy and desperate housewives are also adequate representations of what women's lives are like. desperate housewives may be a practically all female cast, but they are all rich white thin stay-home mothers except for the token african american woman who is considered the new trouble maker on the street. the charachers are hardly challenging stereotypes or sexist attitudes towards motherhood or gender roles. sex in the city eventually had all the women settle down with men, and buffy the women have to use violence to be empowered. and on the whole "chick flicks" do the same things, reinforcing sexism within the movie industry.

one other thing - the point of the See Jane report was G rated movies (and the role models they promote) - i.e what children watch.

the guerilla girls also website has some good stuff about sexism within the movie industry http://www.guerrillagirls.com/

If you are talking sheer numbers there may be some point.

As far as “challenging stereotypes or sexist attitudes towards motherhood/fatherhood or gender roles.� She could throw the little boys a bone, this area is so gender neutral.

Then again so could some famous guy, or other famous woman or better yet someone could cover both!!! Sadly, I realize this.

If only I were rich and famous, I think I will start a charity!

Females in Crowd scenes: I have noticed on many occasions whilst watching a News program that the crowds in news stories such as those from France depicting rioters, or protestors on the streets of Iraq, stone throwers, football hooligans fighting etc are all predominately male.
I often wonder where all the women are? Could it be they are just too sensible and chose to stay away from their idiotic male counterparts in these circumstances?

Maybe women just come to the fore when the reason is worth fighting about.
I must admit I despair sometimes watching these scenes and I am grateful

Maybe that is one of the reasons why women do not feature so much in recreated crowd scenes.

TV and film tends to reflect life so until the World becomes less male dominated the discrepancies mentioned in this comment will always be prevalent.

One thought on male v female roles for actors: the parts available to women are of substance; those available to men, of which there are more, do not always carry the same weight, after all not every part is a ‘Ghandi’

Thought children derived their role models from life ... employment is the only real issue here ... TV is like pretend and too much is not healthy ... too many alpha waves etc.

It's not only important to address the number of female characters on tv/in film, it's also important to address the kinds of characters that are female. I wonder what subtracting the number of murdered/raped/tortured/mutilated female "characters" that appear on all the variants of the SVU themed tv shows would do to the ratio of male to female characters. It's not just more, it's also different that's required. Just my two cents.

Gigi: Excellent point, more 2c worth like that and we'll all be in the money!

It’s good to know that our first female “president� is concentrating on the important issues.

Reminds me of something I read recently about the movie "Silent Hill" - the character of the husband was added to the script secondarily due to studio concerns about the lack of male characters. Ever heard concerns about the cast of an action movie being too male?

"In those real-world roles that approximate the exciting roles which Hollywood enjoys portraying, such as lawyer, detective, and soldier, males are predominate. The same goes for peripheral roles in business. I'm not sure how one can demand equal gender representation in entertainment when there is no equal representation in reality."

Well, first off, I've seen plenty of action films that don't have remotely proportionate numbers of female cops, FBI agents, etc. Batman Begins immediately comes to mind - exactly one female character in a position of remote authority (and she still spent the entire movie being rescued). Hell, she was the only female character with more than 3 lines. The writers & producers of the movie can imagine a crime-ridden highly stylized cityscape where a guy is able to use magical-technology to dress up like a giant bat and fight crime, but they can't imagine female cops. Similarly, other recent movies with far more insane premises (Episode III, Spiderman, the Brothers Grimm, The Island) may toss out a single strong-willed or physically capable female character, but she'll either be the sole female character in the universe or ultimately made helpless so the hero can save her.

Even in movies where there's no profession-related reason for all the main characters to be male, it still happens. Even in movies with a leading female character, there are often few female supporting characters. There are just fewer female characters all around, regardless of the setting or topic.

Shoot, look at "Ice Age," "Over the Hedge," and "Madagascar." They're recent films about talking cartoon animals. Quite far removed from anything in our reality - the main characters lack professions entirely, and you have to accept the absurd premise that all animals are as intelligent as humans, and indeed, act just like humans.

But the major characters are still disproportionately male. There's no explanation for that.

I think Tony just implied that there are more males than females in reality.

I CALL BULLSHIT!!!

Yeah tony poorer health, wars, work place death, shorter life spans, the majority of homeless being men, and suicides, keep the numbers way lower for men in reality.

Oh yes and I forgot about murder, more men die of murder as well.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/gender.htm

It is very strange that their are less women in TV land, we should start killing off male characters for the reality edge!

Just because real life is shitty does not mean that the plays, movies, and television have to perpetuate the bullshit. Real life is male dominated and so are the movies and television shows that are on the boob tube. Maybe if those movies and television shows were a bit more balanced the youth who seem to learn so much from it, whether right or wrong, may develop a view different from current society.

The two big reasons for the dearth of females in G-rated films are that a lot of the source material (childrens' books, fairly tales) feature male protagonists, and more importantly, a number of very well-made childrens' films featuring female protagonists underperformed at the box office (A Little Princess, Matilda, Because of Winn-Dixie...), leading a lot of executives to believe that boys won't watch films with female protagonists. So while studio executives bear a large measure of responsibility for not pushing harder, they're also reacting to the market in this case.

While sexism on the part of Hollywood plays a role too, believe me, there are executives who very much want to do female-centered kids' films. Film and television has proportionally more female executives than nearly any other US industry, and many of the men have daughters and want to produce films with good role models for them as well.

For example, Nina Jacobsen at Disney has spoken repeatedly on this subject, commissioned a live-action version of Kiki's Delivery Service (a wonderful animated film by Hayao Miyazaki, which like many of his films centers on a young female protagonist) for exactly this reason.

That said, Pixar, as terrific as they are, might want to look into doing a story with a female protagonist. If nothing else, it'd help shake them out of their formula...

BTW, when one moves over to television, especially aimed at younger kids, the gender imbalance appears much less pronounced. A look through the Nick Jr. schedule, for example, reveals shows like Dora the Explorer (female adventurer protagonist), Wonder Pets! (two out of the three lead animals are female, and all three are voiced by girls, Blue's Clues (male host and female puppy, Lazytown (female lead, albeit a girl with two adult men in spandex vying for her attention...), Go Diego Go! (basically a male Dora, but surrounded by female supporting characters), and the Backyardigans (three male and two female characters.) And yes, I watch waaaay too much childrens' programming. And no, I have no idea which genders the Boobahs are.

"Reminds me of something I read recently about the movie "Silent Hill" - the character of the husband was added to the script secondarily due to studio concerns about the lack of male characters. Ever heard concerns about the cast of an action movie being too male? "

Silent Hill was basically all female before Sean Beans character was put in, and he only really got a minor role with very few minutes of screen time. There are pretty much NO action movies around that don't feature a female with atleast a semi-important role.

Sigh. I was just watching an old re-run of Farscape, so enjoying the fact that the crew was balanced in terms of males and females, and that the women were often the strongest and most interesting characters on the show. Then I surf over here and see that there's a reason Farscape feels so fresh and amazing to me: because it really is unusual in this sense.

Desperate Housewives as an example of women being adequately represented? You've GOT to be kidding me. That show is ridiculous.

My daughter loves Dora the Explorer, and I am so thankful for it. I never really watched it until I was a mother but here is this wonderful, creative, exploring little girl who goes on all sorts of little adventures and always comes out on top. In fact, it even taught Belle the saying "I did it!" which she now says anytime she does anything good or completes anything. Yup, I love Dora.
Dora aside, there is a large disparity in the amount of women and men portrayed in positive light on tv. I didn't notice it as much until I started reading blogs and really getting into feminist thought, but it made me a lot more aware and now I tend to notice this stuff a lot more. There are a ton of shows that are supposed to appeal to women, but seriously, desperate housewives? I like it, don't get me wrong, but there is no way that any of those women accurately portray what women really do. Even stay at home moms.

In Davis' case, we see great irony. Just as she is decrying the sexism of G-rated movies, her President character is calling out the national guard on a Black community that was allegedly rioting in Hyattsville, a suburb of Prince George's County, replete with stereotyped restaurants selling soul food.

The last riot in Prince George's County, MD, was a bunch of mostly white college student at Maryland. PG County is a real place with real people and is the very arguably best model of economic success and achievement for Black Americans anywhere in the country. And while soul food is undoubtedly sold somewhere in the county, you are much more likely to find Chinese, sushi and Thai food in this prosperous majority black DC megasuburb.

I understand it's just a TV show, but G-movies are just movies. Her sexism argument itself "estopps" her from avoiding the racial stereotyping of her own show. Davis is a megastar and tell a producer the way things are Going to Be; if she had given a damn about avoiding slandering a successful black community as much as she did about an excess of men in Disney films, this embarrassing mess would have been avoided.

If anything she showed that the first woman President of the U.S. may (possibly, or not) be an overreactive, violent and retrograde ass. Hillary, take note.

Science, actually in the original Silent Hill (first game, which the movie draws heavily from), the star was a man, Harry Mason. However they got the rest right, they just changed that one thing.

Personally I think the reason for the change, is that males aren't supposed to be the ones who are 'scared' in movies, ever, this is not a 'masculine' emotion, therefore, they decided to change it to someone who is more...I don't know, 'attractive' when screaming to horror movie viewers. I think the main character was just changed to a female because of sexist reasons myself. (the same symptom that makes a guy afraid of staring at another guy who isn't engaged in something 'manly' like shooting up a terrorist/communist army compound all on his own because it may indicate that person and the onlooker both are gay.) I thought it was so much better with Harry just because he's such an absolute wuss, but overcomes his near-petrifying fright to tackle ghouls just to save his daughter. Also they changed the ending, for whatever reason I don't know, but they implied (spoiler)

that the whole cast was all dead, and Silent Hill is purgatory. Anyone who has played the game can confirm how wrong it is, as the ending which was later considered 'canon' involved the hero having escaped with his daughter, being the Good+ ending. I can understand if they wanted to go a different path but I never heard an announcement so I think it was a late decision to do so. He doesn't perish until (spoiler)

the third game. Extremely good movie regardless of minor fanboy details I took contention with.

"Personally I think the reason for the change, is that males aren't supposed to be the ones who are 'scared' in movies, ever, this is not a 'masculine' emotion, therefore, they decided to change it to someone who is more"

Sorry, but in the context of current movies, that's just plain wrong. Men are just about always scared in todays movies with women often being the strong ones. Take Resident Evil, for example.

I don't know, Geena. I'm skeptical. Is it that maybe raw numbers don't really tell the whole story?

I have a five year old daughter who watches a fair amount of Nickolodeon and Disney Channel. We spend a lot of time together so I watch it with her or we talk about it some. One thing I've noticed is the dominance of female characters on the children's channels.

I also notice that even in the toy stores there are nearly twice as many choices for girls' toys as there are for boys' toys. The TV is a machine for creating consumers. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if more girls lost interest in it.

One more thing: these children's channels show daily how funny and empowering it is when a girl shoves, punches or pushes a boy when he says something she doesn't like.

I've always been a fan of Disney movies, for all their failings. In terms of the movies that have had a memorable impact on my me, I would rank them like this:

- The Little Mermaid
- Beauty and the Beast
- Mulan
- Bambi
- Cinderella
- The Lion King
- Sleeping Beauty
- Pinocchio
- Peter Pan
- Snow White
- Aladdin

Hmm. Female leads have the edge, 6-5. Though if I throw in Hunchback, it would be a tie.

No point to this, really, but the mental exercise was interesting.

"Women need something like opera or desperate housewives or the view or sex in the city, or Buffy or Gilmore girls there aren’t any shows like that."

Yeah, like I want to watch any of that horseshit. That's like saying, "There's plenty of literature out there for you gals to read--all those romance novels, and don't forget Cosmo."

Sean's list is comprised almost entirely of plots in which the mother is absent. (Some have evil anti-mothers, in fact.) Hardly a novel observation, but it's glaring when you line them up like that.

I think any woman that is a feminist is an idiot, just like any man that is a masojinist is a fool. Men and women should be equal, but feminists believe they should be treated better than men and be given more opportunities just because they were born with a vagina. What a joke. A lot of men have earned their positions in this world, and so have a lot of women. If you want something, work for it, don't expect for your vagina to get you there, and when you do get there, don't give you vagina any credit. Ok? Feminists and sluts have a lot in common to me, they both use their vaginas to get ahead.By the way, I'm a mother of three, and the talk about Nickelodean and the Disney Channel is interesting to me. Who cares whether there's more male characters than female, let's focus on the racial aspect of things. Look at the names. The Backyardigans started out with 4 characters. 2 boys, 2 girls. Tyrone, Uniqua, Tasha, and Pablo. None of those are white names. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing other races, I believe in equality to it's fullest, thus, the names should be more like, Tyrone, Ashley, Pablo, and Ming Na. Why are there 3 black names, and one spanish? We're just leaving out our white and asian children now? Yes we are, because white and asian people don't make a fuss when they're not included in something, like some other races do, even thought those other races have complete holidays of their own. I know that if there was a show with 4 characters named Bobby, Lisa, Megan, and John, and it was all white people doing their voices, there would be certain parents having protests over it. So I am bitching. I'm also glad they introduced Austin. That's right, the whites get one character, the blacks get three, the hispanic get one, and sadly, the asians still have zero. This is America. We are a nation of many races. If you were born here, you are American, I don't care if your parents are 100% Chinese, or Nigerian, or Swedish, you are American, so lets stop trying to appeal to just one race, or one sex, and let's appeal to all. This is the land of the free, and no matter what color you are, if you are legal and live by the law, then that's what you shall be here, free. Back to the show, we don't watch the Backyardigans, also because they go on fantasy trips to the Aztec pyramids where humans were slaughtered and levitate. There was one on yesterday about villans, and the two bad villans actually said "we're evil." Yeah, I'm sure Christians are thrilled. It's obvious the show is more appealing to liberals, because anyone with morals wouldn't let their children watch it, unless they want their kids pretending to be evil and dabbling in magic.Then again, most liberals don't believe in evil because it would inconvienience their entire lifestyle, but regardless of what we believe, God is still God, and Christ is coming back, to judge us all, liberal, conservative, or even undecided. These are just some of my thoughts, and what people hate the most is that I'm free to express them. So if you don't like it, move to Canada.

I think any woman that is a feminist is an idiot, just like any man that is a masojinist is a fool. Men and women should be equal, but feminists believe they should be treated better than men and be given more opportunities just because they were born with a vagina. What a joke. A lot of men have earned their positions in this world, and so have a lot of women. If you want something, work for it, don't expect for your vagina to get you there, and when you do get there, don't give you vagina any credit. Ok? Feminists and sluts have a lot in common to me, they both use their vaginas to get ahead.By the way, I'm a mother of three, and the talk about Nickelodean and the Disney Channel is interesting to me. Who cares whether there's more male characters than female, let's focus on the racial aspect of things. Look at the names. The Backyardigans started out with 4 characters. 2 boys, 2 girls. Tyrone, Uniqua, Tasha, and Pablo. None of those are white names. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing other races, I believe in equality to it's fullest, thus, the names should be more like, Tyrone, Ashley, Pablo, and Ming Na. Why are there 3 black names, and one spanish? We're just leaving out our white and asian children now? Yes we are, because white and asian people don't make a fuss when they're not included in something, like some other races do, even thought those other races have complete holidays of their own. I know that if there was a show with 4 characters named Bobby, Lisa, Megan, and John, and it was all white people doing their voices, there would be certain parents having protests over it. So I am bitching. I'm also glad they introduced Austin. That's right, the whites get one character, the blacks get three, the hispanic get one, and sadly, the asians still have zero. This is America. We are a nation of many races. If you were born here, you are American, I don't care if your parents are 100% Chinese, or Nigerian, or Swedish, you are American, so lets stop trying to appeal to just one race, or one sex, and let's appeal to all. This is the land of the free, and no matter what color you are, if you are legal and live by the law, then that's what you shall be here, free. Back to the show, we don't watch the Backyardigans, also because they go on fantasy trips to the Aztec pyramids where humans were slaughtered and levitate. There was one on yesterday about villans, and the two bad villans actually said "we're evil." Yeah, I'm sure Christians are thrilled. It's obvious the show is more appealing to liberals, because anyone with morals wouldn't let their children watch it, unless they want their kids pretending to be evil and dabbling in magic.Then again, most liberals don't believe in evil because it would inconvienience their entire lifestyle, but regardless of what we believe, God is still God, and Christ is coming back, to judge us all, liberal, conservative, or even undecided. These are just some of my thoughts, and what people hate the most is that I'm free to express them. So if you don't like it, move to Canada.

Veronnica, there's a key on your keyboard that might want to investigate; the 'linespace' key.
As for the content of your thoughts, the 'backspace' key might be the one to go for.
Thanks for the vivid illustration of what we're up against in the world of programming for children.

So if you don't like it, move to Canada.

Actually in Canada our media is not obsessed with race.

I think because we are not as capitalistic as the American media and much of our media has this little thing called integrity.

So if something like a natural disaster happens in a predominantly black community, the news story would be the disaster and the human drama not the race of the people themselves.

Like when Quebec was having ice storms and it took a while for the relief to be mobilized. No paper made the anti-Quebec connection, though they easily could have cashed in on separatist sentiments to do this. They didn’t because they have that nagging integrity and morals that they consider.

Race is a media cash cow in the US

You might really like it here V.

(As far as our feminists errr...just dont research the status of women canada and you will be fine!)