Quoting Vanessa Redgrave

"A conservative frame of mind is very limiting for an actor, and a human being, too."
Vanessa Redgrave

"Nothing I do is political. Nothing. I campaign for human rights based on human rights law. That for me is the be all and end all."
Vanessa Redgrave




"I was surprised when I was asked to play Miss Daisy and wondered if I could – only in part because she was Jewish but, also because she was a Southern woman who has hardly opened her mouth before she declares she's not prejudiced, and yet everything she does shows how totally prejudiced she is."
Vanessa Redgrave

"Politics is about divisions. Wherever you come in on the subject, there are divisions."
Vanessa Redgrave

"I've identified all my life with refugees."
Vanessa Redgrave

"I've been working for refugees for years and years and years."
Vanessa Redgrave

"I think everybody, including myself, are in danger of losing our humanity."
Vanessa Redgrave




photographs by Bert Stern (1967) via and via and via and via

TV, Film & Gender

A study examining gender portrayals in general audience films (101 of the top-grossing G-rated movies between 1990 and 2005) came to the conclusion that there was a clear gender imbalance. 28% of the speaking characters and 17% of characters in crowd scenes were female, 83% of the films‘ narrators were male. Apart from gender, ethnicity was a construct affected by a clear imbalance in representation. 85.5% of the characters in G-rated films (i.e. general audiences, all ages permitted) were "white". Differences did not only refer to the quantity, there were also qualitative differences. Females were valued for their appearance, had rather short sighted aspirations and were longing for one-dimensional love. The authors conclude that much work is needed to be done to improve gender portrayals (Smith & Cook, 2008).



"Female audiences are driving the change, I think. Women don't stop consuming cultural product once they stop menstruating."
Cate Blanchet 

"When Lisa Genova wrote this book, she told me that no one wanted to make it into a movie because no one wanted to see a movie about a middle-aged woman."
Julianne Moore at the 2015 Golden Globes Award

"In spite of efforts to achieve greater gender balance within the industry, especially in these busier times, the reality seems to be that it's getting worse not better. These statistics must propel industry and inform government policy to increase the pursuit of proper diversity in the workforce."
Iain Smith

"On so many sets women are seen as lesser beings in terms of status and many women still find it hard to be taken seriously. I just can't bear it. There are still a lot of hostile working environments in film and television for women to walk into that need to be addressed, where they are treated differently from the men, but because of the nature of the industry none of these people get called out."
Beryl Richards



"I've noticed a lot of people talking about the wealth of roles for powerful women in television lately. And when I look around the room at the women who are here and I think about the performances that I've watched this year, what I see actually are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not, sometimes sexy, sometimes not, sometimes honorable, sometimes not, and what I think is new is the wealth of roles for actual women in television and in film. That's what I think is revolutionary and evolutionary."
Maggie Gyllenhaal at the 2015 Golden Globes Award (by the way the same Maggie Gyllenhaal that at 37 was told to be too old to play the lover of a 55-year-old man)



Some figures:

- More than three-quarters of those involved (entire crew from make-up artist to sound engineers and directors) in making 2.000 of the biggest grossing films in the past twenty years have been male, 22% female (via).
- On basis of the 2.000 films, 13% of the editors, 10% of the writers and 5% of the directors were female. Visual effects had 17.5% women, music 16%, camera and electricals 5% (via).
- In TV, less than 15% of directors are women. (via)
- Of the top 100 box-offices releases in the US, 4.4% of the directors are women. (via)
- The Academy Award for Best Directing has been given out for 87 years. During this period, one woman won the award. (via)
- In film, about three-quarters of leading roles are male. (via)
- In 2014, women made up 13% of leading roles. (via)
- In film, 9 out of 10 script writers are male. (via)
- During the 2013/14 television season, 29% of employed TV writers were female (2011/12: 30.5%). (via)
- In 2013, 10% of film screenwriters from the top 250 films produced in the US were female. (via)
- In 2014, only 55.4% of films passed the Bechdel Test (2013: 67.5%, 2012: 66.4%). (via)
- In 2014, women had speaking roles 30% of the time, i.e., 5% more than in the 1940s and 1950s. (via)
- In 2014, the top ten earning actresses made half of what their male counterparts made. (via)
- Ally the Manic Listmaker compiled a collection of movies by women worldwide in the past twenty years and listed 1.400. (via)



Some reactions:

- In 2015, Meryl Streep started funding the "Writers Lab", a laboratory for women screenwriters over 40.
- In 2015, "The Dollhouse Collective" was launched by Rose Byrne and four other actresses, an all-female production company aiming to increase the presence of female filmmakers (via)
- In 2014, Lena Dunham launched "A Casual Romance" with two women, a production company aiming to empower comedic women. (via)
- In 2012, Reese Witherspoon together with producer Bruna Papandrea launched "Pacific Standard" focusing on developing roles for women.
- In 2015, Geena Davis launched the Bentonville Film Festival to promote diversity . (via)



- Smith, S. L., & Cook, C. A. (2008) Gender Stereotypes: An Analysis of Popular Films and TV., www.thegeenadavisinstitute.org
- photographs of Twiggy Lawson by Bert Stern (1929-2013) via and via and via and via and via

The first part of this posting was originally published on Science on Google+ on 14th of December 2013

The -ism Series (19): Tokenism

"Tokenism is defined as an intergroup context in which very few members of a dis-advantaged group are accepted into positions usually reserved for members of the advantaged group, while access is systematically denied for the vast majority of disqualified disadvantaged group members." (Wright & Taylor, 1998)



In her theoretical framework, Rosabeth Moss Kanter distinguishes between a) uniform groups (homogeneous groups in which all members hold the same master statuses, ratio of majority to minority group members is 100:0), b) skewed groups (majority group members far outnumber minority group members, ratio from 99:1 to 85:15), c) tilted groups (less extreme distributions with ratios from 84:16 to 65:35, hence, minority group members can form coalitions and experience less stress) and d) balanced groups (ratios from 64:36 to 50:50).
Skewed groups are characterised by a clear disproportion between majority and minority. In this context, Kanter refers to majority group members as "dominants" and calls minority group members "tokens". As a token, the individual is treated as a representative of the category the individual belongs to, as a typical symbol rather than an individual person. In other words, what one does and how is not attributed to the individual but to the group he or she is considered to be representing. Token woman Mary, for example, is not bad at math because she (the individual) is not good at it but because women (the group) are said not be good at it (see illustration). According to Kanter, tokens experience more stress because they are under performance pressure, are constantly reminded to be "different" and are confronted with stereotyped assumptions on a regular basis (Braboy Jackson et al., 1995).



Kanter's numerical approach certainly explains a great many mechanisms. The reliance on numbers only, however, is criticised for neglecting complexities such as gender status, occupational inappropriateness, and intrusiveness (particularly as Kanter focused on women working in "gender-inappropriate" fields). In fact, token men do not necessarily share the negative experiences of token women (Yoder, 1991) since negative outcomes are primarily associated with low-status groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities) (Settles et al., 2006).



- Braboy Jackson, P., Thoits, P. A. & Taylor, H. F. (1995) Composition of the Workplace. The Effects of Tokenism on America's Black Elite. Social Forces, 74(2), 543-557
- Settles, I. H. & Buchanan, N. T. (2006) Psychology of Tokenism. In Jackson, Y. K. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Multicultural Psychology, 455-456, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications
- Wright, S. C. & Taylor, D. M. (1998) Responding To Tokenism: individual action in the face of collective injustice. European Journal of Social Psychology, 28, 647-667
- Yoder, J. D. (1991) Rethinking Tokenism: Looking Beyond Numbers. Gender & Society, 5(2), 178-192
- photographs by Bert Stern (1960) of Veruschka Von Lehndorff with Walter Matthau, Art Carney and Mike Nichols, Vogue via and via and by Bert Stern (1961)Veruschka with David Bailey via