Supergirl: The New Norm?

You don’t really realize how gender biased the media you consume is until you measure it; or, at least, that’s how it was with me. I guess I’m so used to the things I read and the things I watch being filled with males in all the important roles, I don’t really notice it anymore. But watching Supergirl really opened my eyes to what a show with lots of females in most of the head positions looked and felt like. The show is definitely more balanced gender-wise than many of the other shows that I’ve watched.

While watching the pilot, I was assigned with the task measuring the amount of time females spoke on-screen. This was much harder than I expected it to be and with my buttery fingers, slow reflexes, and engrossment in the show for entertainment purposes, my data is probably not too accurate. But even without precise numbers, my data was able to tell me, when compared to amount of male speaking time and the length of the show in general, that females dominated this show.

Ladies had more speaking time AND made up the majority of speaking roles. This type of show is rarer than it should be. There should be diversity in media that show all the different types of gender-balancing. Some dominated by male characters, some dominated by females, and some that are a great 50-50 split.

Written on October 11, 2016 by Saja Hamayel