Women still striking out in Hollywood

When the women’s baseball-hit A League of Their Own came out 25 years ago, star Geena Davis considered it a home run for female empowerment.

“Suddenly, I had every teen girl and young woman recognizing me from that movie and saying, ‘You changed my life. I play sports because of that movie,’ ” Davis said in a recent chat about the April 18 release of a 25thanniversary Blu-ray edition of the film, a fictional account of the reallife All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that hit theatres just a year after her other landmark women’s film, Thelma & Louise.

Yet with onscreen diversity issues still raging, it seems not much has changed.

“It was just so fascinating how the press for A League of Their Own was all saying, ‘This changes everything because now there’s going to be so many female sports movies’ . . . and there were none,” Davis said.

“The same predictions were made about ( Thelma and Louise).”

While gender equality onscreen has been slower than Davis has hoped, the private meetings her Institute on Gender in Media has had with content creators have her feeling “very optimistic,” she said.

“I do feel that the groundwork is being laid for major change, so just give me another five years and I do think that we will see (a change) because we’re seeing trends.”