"I Want To See Jane" Campaign

Geena Davis, with the help of USC Annenberg School of Journalism professor Stacy Smith, began research to assess portrayals of males and females in children's media.

On January 30 and 31, 2008, at the University of Southern California, under the auspices of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Children in the Media (GDIDM) she presented the findings at a forum for studio heads, writers, educators and students.

Stacy Smith, who introduced the data at the forum, summed up the Geena Davis Institute's results in three succinct points:

• Gender imbalance reigns across the media. Examining 15,000 individual speaking characters across the rating spectrum of G-, PG-, PG-13, and R-rated films, Smith and the GDIDM discovered that males outnumber females nearly 3 to 1 in movies; male narrators outnumber female narrators 4 to 1 (83% to 17%).
• System wide, when females are presented they are shown in a hypersexualized way. Studying 4,000 female film characters, females (from animated girl puppies to grown human women) were more than 5 times more likely than males to be shown as adornment or sexually enticing and three times more likely to be dressed in sexually alluring clothing.
• The highest concentration of this imbalance is in animated films and G-rated programming, where parents might assume their children are safest.

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media doesn't want any Jane to grow up believing she is only worthy of sidekick status. That's where the I Want to See Jane Campaign for girls and women comes in. Women worldwide are asked to create a video.

Read the Official I Want to See Jane Campaign Guidelines
See the videos on YouTube