VARIETY: Academy’s Governors Awards Puts Spotlight on Gender Parity

Earlier in the program, Geena Davis was honored with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her work fighting for gender-parity in media through her Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. “The message we are sending [in society] is that men and boys are far more valuable to us than women and girls,” she said.

Constance Wu presented to Davis, as did her “A League of Their Own” co-star Tom Hanks.

“The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award is given to ‘an individual in the motion picture arts and sciences whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry,’” Hanks said. “So is there a better example of that than creating an entire organization desiderated to providing young girls with examples of women on screen who are smart, who are resilient, who are hardworking, who are inspiring, who are instinctively talented and who are actually played by women who are employed in the business of show?”