---
type: link
link: http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/google-funds-research-tool-for-gender-role-analysis-in-tv-films/
title: Google funds research tool for gender role analysis in TV, films
slug: google-funds-research-gender
date: 2012-12-06
---

Via @teamvalkyrieftw -

> Google granted $1.2 million to a nonprofit organization to help with gender stereotyping research in the media on Thursday, according to Google's websitefor its own Global Impact Awards. The money will go toward developing a tool that will automate the process of identifying women and their actions in hundreds of hours of video.

This is pretty neat, actually, especially if the data is made available.

I've mentioned before that data is something I deal with a lot of, both in and out of work.  I screw around with data for the furry fandom offline and I screw around with data for cloud stuff online, it's just the type of thing that I like to work with.  Big, juicy sets of data.  My own role seems to have settled on visualization, 'cause I have relatively little background in manipulation, analysis, etc.  In this realm, I've already poked and prodded at the [Bechdel Test data](http://vis.mjs-svc.com/bechdel/).

Probably understandable, then, that my favorite bit is this:

> With Google's grant, the institute will reach out to developers to automate the collection of data, designating how women fit into fictional and non-fictional worlds. The institute has not made clear how it hopes to identify women and further establish their marginalization through that automation process (presumably that's mostly for the developers to figure out), but we imagine a combination of audio and visual analysis that check for a number of typical female identifiers would do the trick.

> What we'd most like to see is a tool that could analyze the speech content and patterns of women in TV and films to compare their eloquence with the men presented alongside them.

(I left off that annoying quip at the end that goes along with short articles.)
