You’ll get your turn girls, don’t worry
by digby
A new study released Monday from the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative (MDSC) at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found a lack of gender equity in international films. In the 120 films the MDSC analyzed, only 30.9 percent of speaking and named characters were women.
This study is the first from the institute to take a specifically international perspective. Rather than looking at the top films overall, the MDSC compared 10 domestically popular movies with the top 10 films from the 10 largest international markets: Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United Kingdom (the study also looked at 10 films produced collaboratively in the U.S. and U.K.).
The United States is far from a leader: Of the 11 most profitable film-producing territories, the United States ranks near the bottom in allocating speaking roles to women.
But surely it means nothing. And don’t bore us with further nonsense about women’s equality being an issue. That half the population is so underrepresented and underpaid in everything from board rooms to politics to sports and entertainment is just the way it is. We really need to quit our whining and concentrate on important issues. The ones that affect men.
I get that most people look at that and don’t see it as a problem because this is how the world has always been organized. It feels normal. Even many women feel this way. But it’s not normal. It’s an anachronistic throwback to a more primitive time. And frankly, I’m getting sick of the excuses I keep hearing from otherwise evolved people as to why this situation is not urgent and we must focus our attention on more important matters. For some reason there are always more important matters than equality for women.
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