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 We are a resource for students, teachers, consumers, parents, mediamakers and businesses….and NOT for women only.
The Girls, Women + Media Project is a 21st century, non-profit initiative and network working to increase awareness of how pop culture and media represent, affect, employ, and serve girls and women---and to advocate for improvement in those areas. The Project also seeks to educate and empower all consumers and citizens about consumer rights and responsibilities regarding the media, and to promote universal media literacy.
We do this in two ways:
1) by providing resources for awareness and education for students, teachers, parents, community leaders, mediamakers and businesses included on our website, and through other channels
2) Organizing and supporting "I-CAN!", "Involved Consumers Action Network," a large and growing list of active, concerned individuals and organizations (women and men). This Network offers information about particular consumer issues related to women and girls and suggestions on how to be active for change. (Want to sign up?)
What are we looking at?
The average girl or boy spends approximately 6.5 hours per day being exposed to and interacting with various media—TV, videotapes, videogames, internet, etc. (Source: Kids and Media at the New Millennium: A Comprehensive National Analysis of Children’s Media Use: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Report 1999.)
Think about that! . . . for most of us that’s more time each day, and over a lifetime, than is spent with parents, friends, teachers, sleeping, eating . . . basically more time with commercial media and its content than with any other person or activity.
Is it all time spent badly? No way.There are some good things we get from the information and entertainment we see and hear from the media. We’re living in the Information Age, so we need information. The news media, and lots of sources on the internet, can help us get that. And entertainment can be a fun distraction from the seriousness of our lives, (or it can be a serious contemplation of the distraction of our lives). Communicating and creating through media—whether its making a film, a CD, or a website can be a fascinating form of art and self-expression. Clearly, lots of us enjoy the entertainment media industry in different ways.
But the Age of Information and Entertainment is still relatively new, and how our constant and growing use of media is affecting us in ways big and small can easily be overlooked. We get used to things very easily, and often the many many media images and messages we see and hear enter our brains very quickly, and on a subconscious instead of conscious level. Experts call it passive vs active processing of information.That’s why it’s important to stand back and notice what’s going in to our eyes and ears and our brains, how much and how often, how it might affect what we think about, how we think about it, and what we do.That’s called Media Literacy or also, Media Education or Media Awareness. Whatever you call it, it’s a movement in education and culture which is growing alongside the growth and expansion of the media, each day throughout the country and world.
Read more about Media Literacy.
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Children Now recognizes The Girls, Women + Media Project with our "Children Now Web Award" for excellence in the following areas: