On 5 August, UN Women broadcasted a Facebook Live conversation with Academy-Award winning actor and activist Geena Davis, ahead of the premiere of the film, This Changes Everything.
Told first-hand by some of Hollywood’s leading voices behind and in front of the camera, This Changes Everything is a feature-length documentary that uncovers what is beneath one of the most confounding dilemmas in the entertainment industry — the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of women.
Research has progressed since the first-ever global study on female characters in popular film was commissioned by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, with support from UN Women and The Rockefeller Foundation. The data from the 2014 study showed less than one third of all speaking characters in film are female. Less than a quarter of the fictional on-screen workforce is comprised of women, and when they are employed, females are largely absent from powerful positions on screen.
This online event gave audience members around the world an opportunity to learn the importance of changing the culture of false narratives, stereotypes and inequalities that has long defined the history of film and television.
The panellists for the Facebook Live conversation included Tom Donahue, director of This Changes Everything and Academy Award-winner and activist Geena Davis, who is featured in the new film and also its Executive Producer. The conversation, moderated by UN Women’s Oisika Chakrabarti, explored solutions to end discrimination against women in the film and media industry.
You can see the conversation here.
