By Charlene Weisler
In a time of hesitancy among some media companies to take action in support of women’s rights, Screenvision is stepping up, says Christine Martino, EVP Ad Sales. Her company has entered into a partnership with Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to raise awareness of gender bias in Hollywood. “Screenvision Media has always been an advocate for gender equality in the workplace and in society, and with our connection to Hollywood and the movie industry, the partnership seemed like an ideal extension of the work we were already doing,” Martino explains.
Films will be evaluated to determine if they earn the GDIQ-Check, a metric that analyzes films based on the screen time, speaking time, diversity and whether or not there are stereotypical representations of its female characters in accordance with our 19-point scoring system.
Charlene Weisler: Are there set goals, and if so what are they?
Christine Martino: We are bringing in a studio launch partner and highlight their upcoming films that meet an extensive, proprietary set of criteria for fair, diverse gender portrayal standards set by Screenvision and the Geena Davis Institute. Once we secure this partner, we will spotlight their upcoming films that have received this GDIQ-Check by integrating them into our new fixed content pod. In this new feature in our Front + Center preshow, Geena will discuss her Institute’s mission and encourage moviegoers to go to theaters to see the films that are in support of this cause.
Weisler: What type of impact do you hope to achieve?
Martino: We hope to encourage millions of moviegoers to support the featured GDIQ-Check films by seeing them in the theatre. Screenvision sits at an important juncture of the media ecosystem: we are poised to bring together brands and movie-goers with content creators and distributors and we want to use this position to support the important cause of gender equality in media.
Weisler: What are the biggest obstacles?
Martino: Our greatest challenges are bringing awareness to the gender inequality that still exists in Hollywood and encouraging more studios to support the Institute’s work. We are looking forward to overcoming them to effect real and much-needed change.
Weisler: Where do you see this effort going three years from now?
Martino: We expect that multiple studios will want to be included and featured in our awareness campaign and that they will begin to change the way they evaluate the gender balance in their films before they are even in production. We believe supportive brands will surround this content feature and, in addition to attaching their advertisements to these GDIQ-Check films, look to accurately portray women in the advertisements themselves in support of all forms of media breaking the gender bias.
