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Geena Davis' Very Simple Solution to End Hollywood's Gender Inequality Problem

Oscar winner also reveals which movie studio is making the most improvements

By Marc Malkin Oct 02, 2015 7:39 PMTags
Geena DavisMatt Sayles/Robert Todd Williamson/AP INVISION

Geena Davis has a lot of meetings in Hollywood.

And they're not just about what movie or television series she'd like to star in next.

With her non-profit Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the Oscar winner has been on an 11-year crusade to increase the presence of women in Hollywood both on and off screen.

Davis points out that ratio of male and female characters in movies hasn't changed since 1946.

"I meet with everyone in Hollywood," she said. "I just go directly to them and say, 'Whatever you're going to make now, just before you cast it, go though and change a bunch of first names to female and if it says in a script that a crowd gathers, just put half should be female,'" Davis says. "All you have to do is that. Just a few strokes of the pen and now you have a gender-balanced movie. And they won't be stereotypical female characters because they were written for men."

The institute hasn't studied the 2015 film releases yet, but Davis says more than half of the executives she has met with said her suggestions impacted "two or more of their projects. Forty-one percent said that it impacted four or more of their projects."

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"I'm very confident predicting that as stuck as that needle has been, it could change this year," Davis said. "When it does, it will be historical."

She praises Disney as being the most responsive studio. So much so that she works as a gender consultant for their theme parks. "I'm hopeful when somebody takes the lead like Disney, others will follow," Davis said.

Davis also launched the Arkansas-based Bentonville Film Festival in May to champion women and diversity in media. (The inaugural Best Documentary winner, In My Father's House, is in theaters this month with a symposium tour kicking off Oct. 12 at AMC Empire 25 in NYC.)

"We want to show how commercial it is to have diversity and the presence of a female voice onscreen or behind the camera," Davis said of the festival. "All the studios want to have a really big presence next year…It's very exciting."

The 2016 Bentonville Film Festival kicks off May 3 and runs through May 8.

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