Oscar’s cracked glass ceiling

The Los Angeles Times featured a study by Faculty Fellow Stacy L. Smith. The LAT reported: "The population might be more than 50% female, but actresses nabbed only 29.9% of the 4,379 speaking parts in the 100 top-grossing films of 2007, according to a recently released study by Stacy L. Smith, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communications & Journalism at USC. Only 2.7% of the directors on those films were women, but when they did step behind the camera, the percentage of female characters jumped dramatically, to as high as 44.6%, compared with 29.3% when the director was……

Essay and a Woman’s Nation

I have just returned from the Los Angeles launch of A Woman's Nation –an ambitious project and a unique report on the status of American women which includes an essay I co authored with Stacy Smith, Ph.D. and Amy Granados entitled Sexy Socialization: Today's Media and the Next Generation of Women" . The Womens' Nation initiative is produced by California First Lady Maria Shriver with partners including the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the CCLP and the multifaceted report –including a comprehensive national poll–is known as, The Shriver Report…….

CCLP essay published in Shriver Report reveals gender bias in media

Fellows from the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy have authored an essay in a report released October 15 by award-winning broadcast journalist and author Maria Shriver. Shriver is working in partnership with CCLP and the Center for American Progress on an ambitious research project examining how women's changing roles are affecting government, businesses, faith communities and the media. Findings are being released in The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything. It "outlines how these institutions rely on outdated models of who works and who cares for our families, and examines how all these parts of the culture have……