Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of an important film, ‘Thelma and Louise’.  I was reminded of this significant piece of female character driven filmmaking (though perhaps not as seminal and impactful as we women content creators would have hoped) when I stumbled upon this PBS video through an article featured on The Wrap about Geena Davis and her work at the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.  The Geena Davis what? Yes, she founded an institute dedicated to bringing gender equality to children’s programming. She has been doing this for SIX YEARS now and is now in partnership with the USC Annenberg School of Journalism.  She petitions studios, producers and networks, showering them with research and facts, with the hopes that children will one day have content that display male and females as equals, in scope, depth and numbers.  How important for a child to see that there are just as many girls as boys in the colorful worlds that their TV and iPad offer them- and more importantly, that girls can have life aspirations, just like boys, that don’t just revolve around romance (the princess syndrome as I call it but that is for a forthcoming post.)

The role of women as storytellers, content creators and creative and intellectual pioneers (my new term for thought leaders) has been on my mind as of late, so I want to start highlighting those women who are forging inspiring paths. Please feel free to forward me any links that you think are relevant.  I’m going to try to highlight one kick butt, take no prisoners woman a week.  So read, watch, discuss and be inspired!

Be back soon,

Taryn