EQUALITY MYTH

The More TV Girls Watch, The More Limited They Consider Their Options

We were on a panel recently, and someone asked us how we would raise our daughters, knowing what we know now. We stumbled a little—we don’t have kids, and haven’t yet given it a whole lot of thought. Well, Geena Davis just clarified things for us.

Turns out five years ago she started the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (ed: who knew!?!?), which monitors the portrayal of gender in children’s movies and television shows. The group found that in G-rated films, there are three male characters for every female.

In an op-ed, Davis writes:

Our research also revealed that when female characters do exist in media, most are highly stereotyped and/or hyper-sexualized. Consider this: Female characters in G-rated films wear virtually the same amount of sexually revealing clothing as female characters in R-rated films.

With such disempowering images, then, what message are girls absorbing about themselves? And what message are boys taking in about the worth and importance of girls? In fact, studies show that the more television girls watch, the more limited they consider their options in life; the more boys watch, the more sexist their views become.

The knee-jerk reaction to all this would be, of course, not to let your kids anywhere near the television. But Davis is taking a different tack with her three children. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, she says:

We watch pretty much everything. When there’s a new G or PG or animated movie, we go to see it. What I do is talk about it with the kids. I point out the imbalance. That’s the advice I give for parents, to talk about (media) with your kids, educating them about it.

Again, it all comes down to communication, education, and opening up our eyes. Ms. Davis, we salute you!

Tales from the Frontlines: ‘Thanks for Taking Care of That, Babe.’

It’s pretty amazing to hear that our blog reached a woman working at a beer company in the Midwest. She writes:

Our company has 80 employees, 5 are female. When I first started, I didn’t notice the lack of respect for females right away, because I was working so closely with the only other women. Then I started to get to know our salesmen, merchandisers, inventory controllers & drivers: all men who thought that no matter what my position in the company was, I [was] here to make their lives easier. Even after I got promoted, I had salesmen asking me to do menial tasks they could easily complete themselves (think stapling). I was constantly referred to as “Hunnie”, “Sweetie”, “Dear” and my personal favorite, “Kiddo” (this by a man who happens to be 3 years older than me). My final straw came when our warehouse foreman was discussing a promotion at a Hooters restaurant and asked the sales manager to send me along so he could see me in those shorts.

After bringing my discomfort to the attention of my sales manager and boss, I was told that I needed to get a thicker skin. He reminded me that the guys didn’t mean it to sound as condescending as it was and that I needed to be a grown up and deal with it. I dropped it. Ever since, I’ve been denied the raise I was supposed to get a year ago when I got promoted because I “need to work on having a professional relationship with the sales force.” It’s been frustrating and upsetting, mostly because I really enjoy my job. At times I’ve felt like the problem here was because we’re a small, male-dominated company. And then the 77 cent statistic, it makes me worried that it will be like this no matter where I go! Your blog gets my energized and thoughtful of ways to get involved though, so thank you! I appreciate being able to read it right after I hang up from “Thanks for taking care of that, babe!”.

Submit your own tales from the frontlines here. We promise to respect anonymity.

Kristof: The Boys Have Fallen Behind. But What About the Girls?

In this week’s New York Times, columnist Nick Kristof reports on the latest trouble with young boys—who, according to the Center on Education Policy, have fallen behind girls in reading in every single state. “The most pressing issue related to gender gaps,” the report claims, “is the lagging performance of boys in reading.”

Before everyone starts freaking out about the boy crisis, a quick reality check:

Boys have been lagging behind girls in school for decades. As Peg Tyre wrote in her book, “The Trouble With Boys,” elementary-aged boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities; and the number of boys who said they didn’t like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001, according to a University of Michigan study. Nowhere is the shift more evident than on college campuses: thirty years ago, men represented 58 percent of the undergraduate student body, today, at 40 percent, they’re a minority. As Margaret Spellings, the former U.S. secretary of Education, told Newsweek in 2006, this widening achievement gap “has profound implications for the economy, society, families and democracy.”

But here’s the rub: no matter how poorly boys do in school, there is no evidence to show that that those lags impede their later success. And in fact, young men still outpace women in the workforce to an astonishing degree. U.S. Department of Education data shows that despite earning lower college GPAs, men still earn some 20 percent more than women in their first jobs out of college. The wage gap  widens as men accelerate into management positions more quickly—over a lifetime, male high school graduates will earn some $700,000 more than their wives or sisters; college graduates will earn $1.2 million more.

To be sure, academia is critical—but the workplace lasts the rest of your life. And while young women may thrive in a merit-based system, there is growing evidence to prove they don’t have the skills to excel in a professional setting. Young women are four times less likely to negotiate a first salary, and, according to a recent Girl Scouts study, afraid to take on leadership positions they fear will make them seem “bossy.” “The zeitgeist is that girls are excelling and boys are having trouble,” says Rachel Simmons, the author of The Curse of the Good Girl. But it all depends on what you’re measuring.” In other words, all those ribbons and medals don’t translate to the real world if women are too afraid to ask for what they deserve.

Kristof makes the point that this doesn’t need to be a zero-sum game: “We should be able to help struggling boys without imposing any cost on girls,” he writes. He’s right. But the reality remains: gender inequities still—as they have for centuries—damage many more women than men.