"The more hours of television a girl watches, the fewer options she believes she has in life..."

[Mmmango]

...And the more hours a boy watches, the more sexist his views become."

Interview with Geena Davis in the Wall Street Journal

I have quite mixed feelings about the article actually, she seems to have very strong evidence that there are serious problems with kids' TV, but then she just says, "Well, no one knew about it before. Now we've told them it'll all be sorted by 2015". What's that about?

Engelbert, that is interesting, I didn't know that about Dora / whora

I have a "long thing" that I am trying to write about toys and stuff and this is making me want to get on with it

If boys are picky about male leads while girls will watch anything

Why is it that my DDs are into Peppa Pig, Ben and Holly (Holly being equal lead) and Dora? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm?

I think that's a balls argument.

Dora/whora thing interesting. I too approve of Dora because she is shaped like a child, wears sensible clothes and has top adventures

I love the fact that Tweak is a female engineer in Octonauts but I think it's really sad that there are three main adventurers and they are all male. And it's co-written by a woman.

I have noticed the lack of female presenters too of late and I'm sorry I don't believe a preponderance of Sid'n'Andy is turning more boys back on.

There are two female lead characters in Kerwhizz (versus one male)

' I'm sorry I don't believe a preponderance of Sid'n'Andy is turning more boys back on. '

It's turning me on though, Sid doing the number rap especially.

arf.

I have been tempted to record Sid doing the number raps so I can watch them when DS goes to bed :o

I think the fact that she's watching G Rated movies andd kids TV in America will have had a big impact on what she has seen.

She speaks of 1 female to 4 or 5 males in group scenes and also that the females are in hyper sexualized clothing...what has she been wtching with a 2 year old with that content?

Sounds like those awful pre-teen tv shows to me...

I think the posters here have hit the nail on the head when thay talk about

a) international syndication of programmes, and
b) tie-in licensed goods.

I'm not sure that changes to BBC provision (which is already good, compared to some, and of course advert free) is really going to change much when there are so many other channels available.

I agree with vezzie - the amount of screen time is an important factor, possibly the most important. The study did not find that the less-affected girls were watching different TV, they were watching less.

1 female to 4 or 5 males sounds about right to me.

Hyper sexualised clothing - think disney princess type stuff.

I'd like a follow-on study to look at that distinction, meditrina, if the children are watching similar amounts but one group watching "good approved-by-mumsnet-type-parents-and-feminists" tv and the other group the load of old tat offered up by children's tv producers - including the BBC, I think 90% of it's grim, that's partly why I encourage my primary age dc to watch some adult stuff instead, even if it does include sex/swearing/domestic violence, if it's a good interesting story that makes you think.

I think there's no doubt that less TV is better, and being glued to a screen is not the healthiest activity. Like everything, moderation is good.

Unfortunately many people do watch an awful; lot of telly, many children do watch an awful lot of telly, and will continue to do so no matter what the studies say. So it would be better to improve the output for them, IMO.

Incidentally I am one of "them" - I love my TV

The 'boys won't watch it' argument is really not good enough. What if they'd found that White people preferred all White presenting teams? They'd still use BME presenters because it's the right thing to do and then public opinion would change. They need to be part of the solution, not kyat accept a status quo which is discriminatory.

'Just' - not 'kyat'

??

Yes, that's the argument they use for preferring young pretty women presenters, while having lots of grizzled old guys. "the viewers prefer it"

Well, DD has written her letter to Andy, Sid, Cerrie and Alex. She even explained patiently to her father what she had done and why and that she'd 'run out of fingers counting the programmes with boys in the big parts'.

This is a link to Gina Davis's institute on gender in media.

I can't help feeling that much of the solution lies in getting our children to simply watch less telly, as meditrina suggested at the top of the thread.

but midnight, that sounds a bit as if all we should do is look out for our own children? Sorry if I've misconstrued your post

There's a great feminist critique of the hideous genderfication of adverts for kids' toys if anyone's interested ..

www.feministfrequency.com/2010/11/toy-ads-and-learning-gender/

Sorry tougholdbird, didn't mean to post and run. I didn't mean my post to sound I'm all right Jack, and I'm not saying that I think it's therefore acceptable to accept the staus quo. However, I think that in the statement quoted in the OP there is an underlying problem, which is that children, regardless of gender, are spending too much time staring at screens, and not enough time doing stuff. The statement talks about the problem being incremental, doesn't it? It increases, the more they watch tv. Ergo...

It seems to me that it's the doing stuff that builds confidence, encourages positive can-do attitudes yadda yadda.

midnight I agree, and one thing that bugs me are all these 'interactive' kids programmes where the main character turns round and asks the child whether they can see something or can they help achieve the mission etc.

I think they're meant to convince the parent the child is doing something, not just watching mindlessly watching.

sorry, that's a general rant and a bit off topic