Geena Davis: Gender Equality Fight Takes On Sports, Media, Video Games

Geena Davis’ gender equality fight has her joining other women to not only take on the movie industry, but also the sports world and video games.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, last year International Women’s Day celebrated the great strides women have taken, but gender inequality persists. For example, female doctors face a growing gender gap, and are paid about 25 percent less than men.

The world best knows Geena Davis for her acting roles in The Accidental Tourist, Thelma and Louise, and A League of Their Own. But about 10 years ago the Academy Award winning actress formed the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. So while speaking to a crowd of women she pointed out how people in crowd scenes are often only 17 percent female:

“That means that all the fictitious worlds that are created, the underseas kingdoms and the villages and planetary colonies are made up of only about 17 percent female presence. You think you’d almost have to go out of your way to leave out that many women.”

This wasn’t just a useless statistic she was throwing around. Military officers, tenured professors and members of the animators’ guild are also only around 17 percent women. She believes that if TV and movies portrayed more women in high end roles then more than 17 percent of girls would be inspired. After all, Davis point out: “It would take me many years to become a nuclear physicist. But I can play one tomorrow.”

But Geena Davis’ gender equality fight also extends into the sports world. She’s even competed in archery and qualified for the Olympic trials (maybe she should try out for a role in Arrow?). As such, Davis joined olympians like former WNBA star Lisa Leslie, soccer player Coco Ho, and pro surfer Angela Hucles to highlight women in sports.

Leslie says she was inspired to take up basketball because of another girl who was popular due to the sport. She also recalls how she had to take away the basketball from the ball-hog boys, which she relates to life in general:

“It has been really amazing to see how much [women] have to fight for our position here in our country and in this world. We just want to play and have a piece of the pie too. But at the same time, we’re not gonna sit around and whine about it, we’re gonna fight.”

While this writer couldn’t find any quotes from Geena Davis on video games, it’s also a topic that definitely is related to the subject of gender equality (can anyone forget the E3 booth babes?). Male gamers might be surprised to find out that female Call Of Duty players comprise 25 percent of all multiplayer gamers. Women also make up 45 percent of the gaming community and yet only four percent of the main characters of the 25 biggest games of the year are female.

A recent example was raised in a video game review of Thief:

“When the credits rolled and I saw well-regarded writer Rhianna Pratchett’s name atop the writing credits, I did a double-take. Pratchett, who wrote last year’s Tomb Raider, is by all accounts a skilled writer, as well as being a fierce advocate for more diverse, interesting video-game scripts and better roles for female characters. Yet here we have a game with one of the clumsiest, most poorly constructed stories I’ve encountered in recent memory, where the only notable female characters are A) a dull “bad girl” who quickly becomes a damsel in distress B) a mystical exposition-crone and C) a group of prostitutes.”

Over on Twitter, Pratchett was rather vague about what happened:

Yes, I worked on some of the world building/cinematics in Thief. I chose not to talk about it. I have my reasons. Hope some of you enjoy it.

— Rhianna Pratchett (@rhipratchett) February 25, 2014

What do think about Geena Davis’ fight for gender equality in sport and media? Do you think we need more advocates raising the same questions in the video game industry?