Entertainment

Emma Watson Describes Her ‘Feminist Awakening’

Katie Jerkovich Entertainment Reporter
Font Size:

Emma Watson recently sat down to talk to Geena Davis on the lack of women’s roles in movies, saying that gender equality has not been solved.

The young actress and Davis talk about when they first noticed that there weren’t as many women characters as males in TV and movies for Interview magazine.

“Thelma and Louise” star Davis said it was back when her child was growing up and while watching TV she noticed there were more “male characters than there were female.” That’s when she widened her search and could see a similar pattern in movies.

“The world is missing female characters,” Davis said. “A lot of times there is one female character, maybe even a cool one, maybe even an important one. But where are all the rest?”

Watson agreed, saying she had noticed the same thing and that people really don’t realize the problem until it’s shown to them.

“If you’ve been sold the line that gender equality is something that is solved, and that we now live in an equal world and this has all been tackled, you’re not looking for it in the same way,” she said.

“I would say there have been different stages of my feminist awakening. The more layers you peel back and the more things you’re made aware of, you’re like, ‘Oh my God,'” Watson explained.

“Well, it’s funny when I look at my life; my primary school was two-thirds male to one-third female,” she continued. “So I started my life that way. I have four brothers. And when I did Harry Potter, the ratio was more often than not, at the very least, one-third female, two-thirds male. But when I looked at your research and see things like 21 percent of filmmakers are women, only 31 percent of speaking roles in popular films are female — you start seeing it everywhere.”

Davis said for her part she started the “Geena Davis Institute On Gender In Media” to show the people in the industry the problem is real.