Geena Davis Quotes

Just as young people absorb all kinds of messages from the media, young girls learn what it means to be a woman by watching the older women in their lives.

There aren't that many female role models in science. There are a couple of women, but mostly you've got Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss - they're all guys. Bill Nye the Science Guy. I love that guy, but it's all guys.

For me, I was always the only woman in my cohort, first as a mechanical engineering undergraduate student, then as a chemical engineering graduate student. There were very few women getting degrees in those fields at the time. My role models were men - great men role models.

If we show fictional characters doing cool stuff, then girls will want to be it in real life.

Because I had some roles that resonated with women, I immediately noticed that there were far more male characters than female characters in what we're showing little kids in the 21st century, which was stunning to me. But I couldn't find anybody else who noticed.

When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films.

There aren't more lady songwriters for the same reason that there aren't more lady doctors or lady accountants or lady lawyers; not enough women have the time for careers.

Sometimes I try to sell shows with a female lead to networks, and that isn't something that's been a proven formula for them, so they reject it. I do feel like men get the funniest roles in movies.

I am tired of women playing action heroes like men, because they are not men. But sometimes they are written like men.

There's a lot of good roles for men, always, and for very young girls. But for women, not so many.

It is odd there are many movies with many men. But generally movies have one woman, or maybe the older woman and the younger girl.

Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.

I feel like it's harder to get women to show up for movies.

There seem to be more women producers than men.

I won't take parts where the female character has no substance.

Television is often out ahead on social issues. With film, we've only recently proved that one of the oldest misconceptions in the book is wrong, which is the idea that girls will see films with boys as protagonists, but boys won't see movies with girls as protagonists.

Women are half the population of the world, and yet there are so few female characters on-screen.

I think women are very ambidextrous. We don't think twice about reading a book or a movie starring guys. But for guys, it's, like, 'Oh my God, that's a woman thing.' So with my son, I very carefully portion out the female heroes and characters to make sure he's getting an equal amount.

For every movie that you go see, how many leading male roles are there in any given movie, and how many leading female roles are there? There may be 5 or 6 really good roles for guys and maybe one for a woman. And it doesn't even matter if you're 25. That's just the logistics.

After graduating, I was shooting as well as working as a key grip, and I often found myself the only female out of the whole crew, except for producers and the occasional AC.

As women and men, we're not primed and taught to feel that women are as inspirational as men.

I think, as you move to the upper ranks of science - ranks being positions of influence and access - you see fewer female faces. And I think the basic reason is the same reason that you don't see a lot of female faces in Congress or on the Supreme Court or on the directing board of Fortune 500 companies.

I am a woman, and I am proud to say that I work in technology. But I also recognise that the combination of those two facts puts me in the minority.

I think obviously the media need to help promote the game and make it bigger so the younger girls have women role models to look up to and try and aspire to instead of just male footballers.

In high school, I didn't realize that science or engineering were male-dominated fields. When I got to college, and I was one of two girls in a 50-person class, that's when I realized that this was a unique decision I had made as a girl to go into engineering.