00:02:23.760There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:33.520I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:38.880So I was obsessed with the TV show The X-Files growing up, specifically because one Dr. Dana
00:02:45.440Scully. Now, I know that woman scientist is kind of a television genre now, with shows
00:02:50.680like Bones and CSI, but back when I was growing up, Dana Scully was one of the only successful,
00:02:56.360capable women in STEM on television that I had. Before Scully, a scientist on TV was usually a1.00
00:03:02.680loner white dude in a lab coat, and this critical lack of representation kept women and girls like0.99
00:03:08.540me from being able to see ourselves meaningly reflected in STEM fields. According to the
00:03:14.200Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media, yep, spearheaded by that Geena Davis, this portrayal
00:03:20.260reinforces the belief that science is a male pursuit, one that is held by many children,
00:03:25.000adolescents, and adults. Children start implicitly pairing men and math as early as age seven,
00:03:30.140a bias that continues into adulthood. The Davis Institute researches gender representation in
00:03:35.860media and advocates for the equal representation of women. Their researchers looked at the impact
00:03:41.180that Dana Scully had on women and girls in STEM and the importance of representation in media.
00:03:45.920I have the privilege of serving as the president and CEO of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media.
00:03:54.760So how did an actor like Geena Davis, the woman behind iconic performances in films like A League of Their Own, come to start an institute dedicated to equity in media?
00:04:04.400Well, it actually came out of her experience as being a mom.
00:04:07.080Like any mom, she was watching content with her actual daughter at the time, who was a toddler, and she was struck by the disparity and lack of female presence, fictional presence, in the content that she was showing her daughter.
00:04:27.780And like any mom, you turn to your friend, you're like, hey, did you notice in such and such show or movie there just wasn't a lot of female characters? And her friends would say, no, we didn't really notice that. And then she asked the same question when she would meet with producers or other creators for potential acting work.
00:04:48.680And they would say, no, no, we had this character, we had that character, and they were naming wonderful female characters. But there was one. And she thought, my goodness, in the 21st century, women and girls are 50-something percent, 51% of the population, and they're not being reflected in popular content.
00:05:13.220And the concern came because of the messaging. What's the message that not only my daughter,
00:05:22.040but my two young sons are getting about where women and girls fit and their importance. Are
00:05:28.140we saying that they don't share the sandbox? Are we saying that they're not as important?
00:05:32.880And that's what gave her the drive to say, I need to get the research. I want to know if I'm correct. You know, am I truly seeing this gap and this disparity?
00:05:49.880disparity. And so if you hear Gina talk, she'll say, I didn't mean to start a whole institute.
00:05:59.080But once she gets started, she tends to become very laser focused, like with her archery and
00:06:07.080many other things that she does. And that's how the institute came about. So it came about,
00:06:14.200you know, from her being a mom and concerned about, you know, what kind of biases her daughter
00:06:21.060going to grow up with, you know, her sons, et cetera. And that's, that's, that's how it got
00:06:26.640started. Yeah. I'm so glad that you talked about how it's important, not just for young women and
00:06:33.100girls, but also for boys, for people of any gender to understand that, you know, yes, women and girls
00:06:40.720are self-actualized, we have, you know, roles in society and in the workplace, like, it's not just
00:06:48.300important for women and girls, it is important for us, but also for everybody to see the ways
00:06:53.420that women and girls should be integrated in society and see a diverse, you know, array of
00:06:58.620what that actually looks like. Yeah. So for example, if you grow up seeing, say, a media0.65
00:07:06.020a landscape that is full of many diverse people. I'm not just saying boys, girls, any type,
00:07:15.360people with disabilities, LGBTQIA. If that's normalized in what you see in the fictional world,
00:07:22.460then it transfers into your real life when you're at school, maybe when you're playing sports,
00:07:30.220maybe your first job, you would expect to see that flavor, those colors of the rainbows reflected in
00:07:37.480an environment because that's all you've ever seen. That's what you've known. Now we know that's
00:07:42.960not exactly the real world, but it normalizes it. Media is playing as important of a role
00:07:50.700in influencing their societal beliefs as much as church, sports, sleeping, you know, all of those
00:07:59.420other activities. So you can't ignore it and say, oh, it's just a make-believe. No, no, no, no.
00:08:06.080What plays out, you know, on screen can also transfer to real life and could be in a
00:08:12.820wonderful way, in a really positive way. Now, representation is not the end-all be-all,
00:08:18.920but we do know that it matters because everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in the
00:08:23.160stories that we consume. And to that end, the Davis Institute uses technology to put some data
00:08:28.340behind who gets treated like a full main character and who has to be satisfied with just seeing
00:08:33.660themselves reflected as a side character in someone else's story. One of my on-screen idols,
00:08:40.520Miss Dana Scully, your organization put out a report about the Scully effect, which I definitely
00:08:45.580want to talk about. But I have to ask, you mentioned how a diverse array of folks can have
00:08:52.240a diverse array of different kinds of jobs. Applying that to you personally, you have had
00:08:57.920this incredible career that has spanned over so many fields, philanthropy. You're an Emmy-nominated
00:09:03.580entertainment professional. You used to run the Hallmark Channel, which I have to tell you is
00:09:07.260where I get the bulk of my holiday programming. Love the holiday movies. How did you personally
00:09:12.980get plugged into this work at the Institute? I was on a journey, like I think we all are,
00:09:20.160And I'm the first person to go to college in my immediate family. I come from, you know, generations of immigrants like many other people. And so there wasn't a pathway or a pipeline pre-provided for me.
00:09:39.800and so going to college which we could debate the value of that that that's another podcast
00:09:46.800you know at that time um going to college was a really big deal and also trying to find your way
00:09:54.860and this is like secret about me now you're really going to think I'm very strange and I'm sure
00:10:00.700all your listeners are but how do you get information about people and this is like pre
00:10:06.000pre-iOS universe, I would read the obituaries. And as much as I know there's been a lot of
00:10:13.580argument about how the obituaries have not favored women, but I was constantly looking for
00:10:20.740unsung heroines. Were there people out there doing things that could help guide me or give
00:10:29.000me ideas? And I read about so many great women who invented things and people like you just1.00
00:10:34.960would never hear about. Now, of course, you would know who they are. And I was a executive groupie.1.00
00:10:41.480So I would just latch on and look at great men and women who are doing interesting things in
00:10:49.580their careers. And I would look at what was the path that they took, because I didn't have
00:10:54.320anyone leading me. I didn't have anyone, you know, mentoring me. So with that,
00:11:03.440how do you get experience? A dear family friend loved dating very high-powered women. God bless0.97
00:11:12.580him. He's still alive. Thank you, Frank. And I wound up doing a lot of internships with a lot
00:11:18.980of his high-powered girlfriends. That's how I got my gigs. And so I started interning from the time
00:11:27.300I was 17, all the way until I graduated college at 21, where I wound up landing a full-time
00:11:33.880job at ABC because of all the internships that I've done.
00:11:41.140I'm so glad to hear all the different places your professional journey took you.
00:11:45.960And I'm even more happy that you landed somewhere that is really changing, I think, our understanding
00:11:51.300of the role that media can play and how important representation is for the kind of world that
00:11:57.280we want to live in. Some of the tools that the Davis Institute puts out are so incredible. Things
00:12:02.320like the inclusion quotient that uses machine learning to analyze who speaks the most in
00:12:07.440different types of media, or spellcheck for bias that uses the Institute's human expert coding
00:12:13.140to determine the representation of six identities, gender, race and ethnicity, LGBTQIA+,
00:12:18.560disability, body type representation, age representation. I guess my question is,
00:12:23.340How are, first of all, I just want to shout out the depths to which the Institute is like really putting, doing in this work in a granular way. And then also, I guess my question is, how are all of these tools and studies being used to create a more equitable media landscape?
00:12:40.440Well, first of all, I can't take credit at all for the depth of wanting to see not only how many female characters may be on screen, but what is their sense of agency that came from Gina.
00:13:00.000So one of the things that she always wanted to know is, okay, great, I can count on one hand how many female characters there are, but are they being seen and heard with the same weight as their male counterparts?
00:13:14.140And that data point was not humanly possible. And it wasn't until we received a lovely technology grant from Google.org back in 2013, and we found true partners in USC Piterbi School of Engineering, led by Dr. Shree Narayan, to come together.
00:13:36.980and Gina said, I want to know the screen and speaking time. And this is really funny. And if
00:13:43.680you ever have a chance, Dimitri and his team of engineers, Gina and I sat with them and said,
00:13:48.660we want a thingamajiggy. And now you've got the most brainiac million scientists, engineers,
00:13:55.780and they looked at us like, what? Yeah, we want a thingy. We want the thingy to
00:14:00.840the track screen and they built it right they did it um and what we found is uh that even if it was
00:14:09.780a top of the call sheet right so you had a female lead a male lead that the female characters were
00:14:14.880on screen and speaking a third of the time less wow even though they had the same weight say in
00:14:20.740terms of a of a call sheet and that was not possible until we had the gdiq the inclusion
00:14:27.140quotient, which uses, as you mentioned, machine learning plus human expert coders to do the
00:14:34.380other things. Because, as you mentioned, we look at intersectionality. And for us,
00:14:41.340intersectionality, which Kimberly Crenshaw, thank you, Kimberly, beautifully coined at Columbia,
00:14:48.840but in our world, we look at the intersection between gender, race, ethnicity, LGBTQIA,
00:14:55.880disability is age 50 plus and body type.
00:14:59.900So our intersectionality is a little bit different than the traditional full-on definition,
00:15:06.120but that's what we look at, that intersection.
00:15:12.600The tools that the Davis Institute builds and champions opens up the door for media makers
00:15:18.220to make their stories more inclusive and better represent a diversity of identities.
00:15:23.080It's been used as an auditing tool for people to measure where are we, where do we need to go, how are we doing.
00:15:31.380It would be complicated for us and it can be used in a live production kind of way.
00:15:39.980So it's been used as an auditing tool by many leading brands and entertainment entities.
00:15:46.460what we once we socialized that we thought well what could really be an intervention
00:15:53.720and that's where we turned back to our partners at usc who had had this patented text tool ip
00:16:01.540and we said we want a different thingy um and essentially the combination of their text tool
00:16:08.840ip and our human expert coders were able to look at words and so think about it you know you're
00:16:15.400writing a script for something and for the people that are being charged with looking at cultural
00:16:22.640equity in content and then having to have a discussion about it with the people who are
00:16:29.480actually producing and making and crafting the content, this is a way for them to come together
00:16:36.660around a data-driven conversation versus a theory or opinion, and essentially it's very pragmatic
00:16:45.740in that we look at who is speaking, who is contributing dialogue, and it's just who is
00:16:52.560showing up, how are they showing up, are they being described, and for many of your listeners
00:16:58.160who may have gone to film school or, you know, screenwriting 101, you don't describe all your
00:17:03.620characters, which could be great. So the banker, the coach, et cetera, they have dialogue, but
00:17:14.120they may not be described. Well, that could be an opportunity to have a discussion, to say,
00:17:18.460okay, it's the 21st century. Who could the coach be? Who could the banker be? And how could that
00:17:25.380be an opportunity to infuse more diversity, equity, inclusion in a piece of content that
00:17:33.300doesn't disrupt the story. It's not changing the authentic truth of what the storyteller,
00:17:41.120the story they were telling. And so that's where spellcheck for bias is being used to help foster
00:17:50.560to that conversation and also kind of flag some things, you know, especially sensitivities around
00:17:56.020sexism and racism. And there's some things that we can flag. We're all looking to be
00:18:03.180better allies. We're all paying very close attention to how things land when you say
00:18:10.640something, right? And this is a way to help do that. Let's take a quick break.
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00:18:46.380More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.
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00:18:55.700So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.
00:18:58.680Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.
00:19:02.900Think podcasting can help your business?
00:19:37.920Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:19:41.260So I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:19:46.720I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:19:54.120They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:19:58.080But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:20:01.540They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:20:04.660Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:20:13.620If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:20:19.540This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:20:32.020I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and
00:35:08.880Wow. Yes. I mean, that's like saving someone's life. Like media has
00:35:16.280the power to do that. Exactly. So yes, it's make-believe, but what happens in the make-believe
00:35:25.640world can play out hopefully positively in the real world and change lives.
00:35:33.260Oh, I mean, I don't know that I would be hosting a tech podcast if not for Dana Scully. You know,
00:35:40.940I think that there was, we just didn't have stories like that where, you know, her partner was the one who was the out there person. She was the one who was like, cool, calm, collected, didn't need to be saved, was very capable.
00:35:57.660And I really liked that she was, you know, still, she still, you knew that she had a life outside of work and you got to understand her as a full dimensional woman who did this work. I think, you know, if you were, you know, in the study, you talk about how like the perception of a scientist was an awkward man in a white lab coat. Dana Scully wasn't awkward. She did wear a lab coat, but she certainly was not awkward.
00:36:20.560She really, they really depicted her in this loving way and you really got to understand her as a full person. And I think, I just, I still remember the first time I watched the show and what an impression that made on me and thinking like, oh, maybe this could be a career for me one day. Maybe I could do something involved in technology or science or a STEM field because she allowed me to really see it.
00:36:44.860And I'd never seen anything like that before.
00:36:46.760So certainly stories and media have been important to me hugely.
00:37:33.660There's a lot of celebrities that have charities and nonprofits and whatnot, but she really digs in. The Institute was born out of her vision, her desire to change the world and make it more equitable, particularly for women and girls all over the world.
00:37:58.460And she's, she's a really big thinker. She's very creative. But she's very thoughtful, you know, and kind. And, and as you can tell, like, I'm the mouth kind of thing. So, yeah, she she's that cool. And then some.
00:38:21.440I love it. Madeline, is there anything that I did not ask that you want to make sure gets included?
00:38:28.260Well, yeah. So we welcome your audience to become members of the Institute. We do year-round
00:38:35.720programming. We have all kinds of great events where we launch our studies, networking,
00:39:28.200my default is to cut off almost everyone
00:39:30.140and everything from the outside world.
00:39:32.620Thanks to a good therapist and new medication,
00:39:34.660that period of my life is thankfully behind me for now.
00:39:37.860But now that I'm reconnecting with the world,
00:39:39.820I'm struggling to deal with email inbox that is full of unanswered emails,
00:39:43.540some of which are, or at least were, time-sensitive.
00:39:46.800The idea of tackling this inbox fills me with dread.
00:39:50.040It feels really embarrassing and almost rude to reply to an email after several months.
00:39:54.340These feelings of shame and guilt make it difficult to move forward on cleaning out my inbox.
00:39:58.940What's the cutoff for responding to an email late?
00:40:01.400Are there instances where a reply can come so late that it's better to not reply at all?
00:40:05.800And do I need to explain to people why my response is so overdue?
00:40:09.820So if you want to read my full response, subscribe to our newsletter.
00:40:12.840But yeah, I really wanted to start with this letter because, oh boy, can I relate.
00:40:18.080And I feel like a lot of us, especially since the pandemic, can probably relate to this feeling of dread and ickiness that comes with having to dig out an inbox.
00:40:27.460There's actually a recent episode of one of my favorite ever podcasts, You're Wrong About, about how email got to be so awful and annoying.
00:40:33.980Spoiler alert, it has a lot to do with the rise of Gmail as our email platform
00:40:38.240and tech companies like Google kind of thinking that everyone wants to enjoy
00:40:43.020the pressures and expectations to respond to emails right away,
00:40:46.720no matter what time it is that people who are at tech companies have to deal with.
00:40:50.860So that icky feeling that comes with your email inbox is actually kind of by design.
00:40:59.720You know, I also deal with mental health issues.
00:41:02.320In my case, I have generalized anxiety disorder, and my anxiety can really manifest itself into feeling panicky around email and my inbox, and it leads to things like me ignoring emails and really letting them pile up, or spending an hour overthinking an email response that just says, sounds good, thanks.
00:41:19.680You know, I'll spend an hour writing that and thinking about all the ways that it can go wrong, most of which are just kind of in my head.
00:41:25.620But, you know, I'm also a busy creative professional.
00:41:29.240I make a podcast and I do other things.
00:41:31.180And so I can't let my email get too out of control.
00:41:34.700And so I actually take really clear steps to handle this in my own life.
00:41:39.380I have someone who handles my inbox because I know that I just cannot be trusted and really should not be trusted with my own email.
00:41:45.520And I'm really curious, what is your personal relationship with email?