Geena Davis on Gender, Media, and Perception

The Takeaway

Geena Davis is an Academy Award winning actress who’s been fortunate enough to play some truly trailblazing roles. She was a baseball star in “A League of Their Own,” a gun-toting outlaw in “Thelma and Louise,” and of course, the first female president in the TV show “Commander in Chief.”
But Davis realized early on that these roles she so cherished were few and far between. And the fallout from that, as she saw it, went beyond roles for actors, it also included a skewed representation of the world for viewers – and particularly child viewers.
And so, she founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media to improve gender portrayals in children’s media. The institute’s newest project, in partnership with the Independent Television Service, is a series of short videos titled “Guess Who,” which challenge kids’ assumptions about gender roles.

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