Girls are disappearing from kids’ cartoons — and the numbers prove it

Female characters are getting scarcer in kids' animation — and the data says it's a slide, not a blip.

The Geena Davis Institute's “2026 Report on Children's TV Representation,” produced in partnership with Nielsen, delivers the gut-punch: just 40.6% of animated characters in 2025 new programming were female — the lowest share since 2020, and down from a record high of 44.2% in 2023.

The Institute flagged animation as a particular trouble spot, noting that female representation is even more limited among animated series than in children's programming overall. According to the report, female representation is "even more limited among animated characters than live-action ones." And the split inside animation is stark: nonhuman characters — animals, monsters, aliens — skew heavily male (64.7% male versus 53.1% for animated humans), while animated humans are more likely to be female (46.9% versus 35.3%). Translation: if it has fur, fangs, or antennae, odds are it's a boy.

It's a trend, not a fluke. Female representation in new programming has now dropped two years running since peaking in 2023. Madeline Di Nonno, the Institute's president and CEO, broke the findings down for Kidscreen as "good, bad and ugly" — and the "continued decrease in female characters" is the bad.

But it’s not all doom, as the report's other headlines cut both ways. It found record numbers of characters of color, both overall and in lead roles, but a steep backslide in LGBTQ+ representation, per Kidscreen's coverage. 

Still, there are bright spots. The Institute pointed to Disney Jr.'s Hey A.J.! as a model of stronger representation, a series that puts a young girl at the center of stories filled with imagination and adventure. Hey A.J.! is a series "putting young girls at the center of stories filled with imagination and adventure," the Institute wrote on Instagram.

The report also tracks progress across the last eight years, giving advocates and industry folks a long view of whether the needle is actually moving. Right now, it's moving the wrong way. 

For anyone watching the kids' media pipeline, who gets greenlit, who gets to lead, the takeaway is blunt: the gains of 2023 aren't guaranteed to stick without sustained commitment from studios and streamers.

Read the full report at the Geena Davis Institute.

Source: Instagram, Geena Davis Institute