We're showing kids a world that is very scantily populated with women and female characters. They should see female characters taking up half the planet, which we do.
Geena DavisRead
It's really important for boys to see that girls take up half of the planet - which we do.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing women's significant presence and contributions in society.
Geena Davis highlights the need for boys to understand that girls are equal participants in the world, constituting half of the population. This awareness is crucial for fostering respect and equality between genders and promoting a more balanced perspective on gender roles.
In practice
In a school presentation on gender equality, one could use this quote to illustrate the significance of female representation.
We're showing kids a world that is very scantily populated with women and female characters. They should see female characters taking up half the planet, which we do.
Having been in some roles that really resonated with women, I became hyper-aware of how women are represented in Hollywood.
We are in effect enculturating kids from the very beginning to see women and girls as not taking up half of the space.
When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films.
The more hours of television a girl watches, the fewer options she thinks she has in life.
Years ago, I worked in a newspaper office, and there were men that would have fits of temper, and it was just accepted that that's who they were, and everyone would laugh about it, but if a woman got upset or angry, something wasn't right: she was 'hysterical' or 'a little unhinged.' It didn't have the same sort of connotation at all.
When I started, the press credentials said 'No women or children in the press box,' ... There are a lot of things in the workplace that you can attempt to hide, and I could not hide the fact that I was a woman. I was always the only woman in the press box, and they didn't even have ladies rooms.
Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
Our goal should be to develop work-life policies that enable people to put their gender values into practice. So let's stop arguing about the hard choices women make and help more women and men avoid such hard choices.
In many parts of the world, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. But I think we need women to solve the problems that men create.
We talk about women in football like we are not entitled to the same opportunity and the same access.
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