ARTICLES: Where Are All the Girl Ninjas? Sexist Stereotypes Pervade Children's Media

Where Are All the Girl Ninjas? Sexist Stereotypes Pervade Children's Media

By Sara Voorhees, Women's Media Center. Posted February 22, 2008.

Females characters are sexualized, put down, or just plain absent in the shows your kids are watching.

Geena Davis (pictured at right) was watching preschool TV shows and children's videos with her two-year-old daughter when she began to wonder: where were the girls? Where were the animated girl mice, the girl ninjas, the girl puppy dogs? Boy rodents, canines and martial artists seemed to dominate every frame and animated cell, but only an occasional female came popping in for comic or gratuitous effect.

For an actress who had galvanized women with Thelma and Louise and A League of their Own, and was soon to change the course of television history as the first female president of the United States (Commander in Chief), "Where are the girls?" was a question that needed to be answered.

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Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Children in the Media