The gender pay gap is not only a problem in the past. To my surprise, Hollywood has a gender pay gap. I would have never thought the industry that makes billions of dollars through movies and television shows would pay women less than men. This is a huge problem and in 2015 women in Hollywood should not have to worry about the gender pay gap. Furthermore, minority women should not get fewer opportunities for an acting jobs (Berg). It is absurd that women in Hollywood do not have equal pay. Instead of setting an example of equal pay to other occupations Hollywood is setting an example of a gender pay gap.
Having successful movies and awards does not omit women in Hollywood from being underpaid. Jennifer Lawrence had successful movies such as
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American Hustle and The Hunger Games yet some of her male co-stars, including Christian Bale, Jeremy Renner and Bradley Cooper, were paid more than her (Khon). After all, Bradley Cooper is “…best known for his less-than-Oscar caliber performances in The Hangover franchise,” while Lawrence has won an Oscar and is just as popular as him (Khon). Lawrence getting paid less than her male colleagues proves that it’s not about what you have done and how you can bring an audience from different age group and backgrounds. After learning how much less she was paid than her male co-stars through an email hack Lawrence said, “When the Sony hack happened…I found out how much less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks”(Lawrence). Other actresses are also outraged because of the gender pay gap. The winner of the Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Patricia Arquette, gave a powerful speech at the 2015 Oscars. During her speech, she discussed equal pay for women. Arquette said, “ To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America” ("Onstage Speech Transcript:”). I believe it took guts for Arquette to speak on the gender pay gap in such a public platform with millions watching at home. Her speech was directed to the people in Hollywood that pays men more than women even when women have a better resume. The gender pay gap does not only have to do with actresses, but also with film executives.
Like actresses, female film executives are also paid less than their male colleagues, although they are doing the same job. Female film executives work behind the scenes on a movie and television set. An example of how female film executive are paid less is when “The studio[Colombia Pictures] paid Michael De Luca $2.4 million a year but only paid Hannah Minghella $1.5 million a year — or 37 percent less than De Luca” (Khon). This show how not only actresses, but how women in Hollywood are undervalued compared to their male colleagues. Instead of setting an example for the gender pay gap Hollywood should have to set an example for other job occupations. If women in Hollywood, a billion dollar industry, can not get equal pay than female teachers and female engineers do not have a chance to fight for equal …show more content…
pay. The gender pay gap in Hollywood is even worse for minority women. Madeleine Berg from Forbes said, “While, on average, women in this country make an average of 78% of their male counterparts, African American and Native American women make 64 cents and 59 cents, respectively, for every dollar made by white men, and Hispanic women earn just 56 cents to a white man’s dollar” (Berg). It is unfair that in 2015 we still have discrimination because of skin color. Viola Davis during her Emmy speech said,“The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity.You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there” (Berg). Discrimination correlates to lack of job opportunity which can lead to minority women having less of a chance to be a top paid actress. That leads to an even wider pay gap because minorities can’t the same amount of money as a top paid white actress, let alone a top paid actor. Conservatives argue that the gender pay gap is not about equality, but due to actresses being bad at negotiation (Khon).While both actors and actresses hire lawyers for negotiation, actresses end up on the wrong end. Going back and forth asking for more money is not something actresses feel comfortable doing. Jennifer Lawrence felt that way and said, “I didn’t want to seem ‘difficult' or ‘spoiled.’ ” (Lawrence). Women in Hollywood are encouraged to think that if they ask for more money they will be perceived as divas and brats. Lawrence said in regard to accepting a lower salary, “At the time, that seemed like a fine idea, until I saw the payroll on the Internet and realized every man I was working with definitely didn't worry about being ‘difficult’ or ‘spoiled’ ”(Lawrence). Unlike women, men do not have to deal with the stereotypes of being divas when they take a stand and ask for an increase in pay. Women in Hollywood are not bad at negotiation it is just they are undervalued and encouraged to accept less pay than their male colleagues. Despite the unfairness of this situation, there can be severe consequences for demanding equal rights in Hollywood.
Rose McGowan, a former actress, on Charmed realized this after calling out Adam Sandler ("Rose McGowan Biography.”). Rose McGowan called out Adam Sandler because of his sexist wardrobe demands on his movie script. Rose tweeted Adam Sandler’s wardrobe requirements on Twitter, which were “Black (or dark) form fitting tank that show off cleavage (pushup bras encouraged). And form fitting leggings encouraged. Nothing White” (McGowan “Casting notes”). Notably, calling out Adam Sandler for sexist wardrobe requirements did not sit right with her acting agent. On Twitter, she later said, “I just got fired by my wussy acting agent because I spoke up about the bullshit in Hollywood. Hahaha. #douchebags #awesome #BRINGIT”(McGowan “I just got fired”). It seems kind of crazy calling a famous actor such as Adam Sandler out on social media but when “top-paid actors … made 2½ times as much money as the top-paid actresses” it was a great thing to do (Woodruff). It showed the public how demanding and sexist Hollywood is when women get fired for speaking her mind. If calling someone out in Hollywood over wardrobe demands gets you fired, envision the difficulties of demanding equal
pay. It is shameful that in 2015 there is a gender pay gap in Hollywood. It makes no sense as to why actresses like Jennifer Lawrence, who’s had successful movies such as The Hunger Games, are paid less than male co-stars. Additionally, minority actresses are not given an equal opportunity for acting roles and are making even less compared to their white female colleagues. Lack of equal pay applies not only to the women who act in on screen, it also includes those that are in the background, like female film executives. However, conservatives argue that women are bad at negotiation, which is bogus. If one of the biggest and popular industries such as Hollywood has a gender pay gap then why should normal occupation such as teacher and engineers have equal pay? This a problem and needs to be corrected in Hollywood.
Since many of the roles are given to white actresses, actresses of color are underrepresented in the industry. Only six out of the top 500 box office films feature a woman of color as their protagonist, none which are at the top 200. This only leaves it to around 1% of the protagonist to be a woman of color. As we head towards a better society, more and more examples of media that challenge these statements are being created.
In American culture today, women continue the struggle of identifying what their roles in society are supposed to be. Our culture has been sending mixed messages to the modern day female, creating a sense of uneasiness to an already confusing and stressful world. Although women today are encouraged more than ever to be independent, educated, and successful, they are often times shamed for having done just that. Career driven females are frequently at risk of being labeled as bossy, unfeminine, or selfish for competing in many career paths that were once dominated by men. A popular medium in our culture such as television continues to have significant influences as to how people should aspire to live their lives. Viewers develop connections with relatable characters and to relationship dynamics displayed within their favorite shows. Fictional characters and relationships can ultimately influence a viewer’s fashion sense, social and political opinion, and attitude towards gender norms. Since the days of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeanie, where women were commonly portrayed as being the endearing mischievous housewife, television shows have evolved in order to reflect real life women who were becoming increasingly more independent, educated, and career oriented throughout the subsequent decades. New genres of television are introduced, such as the workplace comedy, where women are not only career oriented, but eventually transition into positions of power.
During the semester, race is a big part of the lectures. In class, we talk about how race is distinguishing physical characteristics used to place people in different racial categories (Jensen). The biggest concern with race is racial inequality. Racial inequality is the inadequate or unfair treatment of minorities in areas like income, education, employment, health, the criminal justice system, and media. The article written by Rebecca Keegan from the Los Angeles Times newspaper discusses the inequality of race in media specifically movies. This article relates to the unfairness in films because minorities are poorly portrayed in the majority of films. More often than not, minorities are the “bad guys” in films. They are caught up in criminal activity and live in poorer neighborhoods than the majority. The article gives numerous statistics proving and exploiting that there is indeed racial inequality depicted in films. Also the Keegan touches on how minorities are underrepresented in films in the way that they usually do not have as many speaking lines compared to the white actor/actress.
...ue to the fact that she is so concerned with the gender aspect that she overlooks the reasons for keeping the categories separate. By having separate categories a male and female staring in the same film are both eligible to win an award, something that would be impossible if the categories were merged. She also disregards the fact that merging the two categories would lead to fewer nominees, which would force both male and female actors to be left out of the nominations. Her background in Women’s studies further impacts the overall effectiveness of this argument. Many readers may disregard the entire article because they feel that she is just using it as a means to promote Women’s rights. On the other hand, people who firmly believe in gender equality may be more inclined to accept her argument, even if they could care less about having separate categories.
This social justice issue is important in the community because it impacts women by disrespecting them, it makes women feel like they are not valued. Our central question is does pay equal respect? If pay equals respect then women are definitely not being respected. Society believes that men have that higher power so they should get paid more, this is a . It impairs the ability of women and families to buy homes and pay for college education, it limits their total lifetime earnings, savings, and benefits, which makes women much more vulnerable to poverty in retirement.This issue expands even into nonprofits as of nonprofits with budgets
The gender pay gap was a problem in the past and it is now. Hollywood has a gender pay gap and that came to my surprise. I would of never thought the industry that makes billions of dollars through movies and television shows would pay women less than men. Actresses and film executives are paid less than their male colleagues (Khon). It is absurd that women in Hollywood do not have equal pay.
Pay equity programs attempt to address the undervaluation for work traditionally or historically done by women. Pay equity (also referred to as “comparable worth”) programs require a gender-neutral analysis of comparative work. A variety of very different jobs are compared based on a composite of the skill, effort and responsibility of a job and the conditions under which the job is generally done. The comparison determines the relative worth of those jobs to the achievement of a firm’s objectives, under the proposition that equal contribution merits equal compensation. Where female-dominated jobs in the workplace are found to be of equal or comparable value to male-dominated jobs but paid below the level of the male jobs or payline, then all employees in those female-dominated jobs are entitled to receive pay equity adjustments.
Blau, F., & Kahn, L. (2007). The Gender Pay Gap: Have Women Gone as far as they can. Academy of Management Perspectives , 21 (1), 7-23.
To this day, women make 80 cents for every dollar earned by men, making a gender wage gap of 20 percent. According to Institute for Women’s Policy Research, “it will take 44 years –or until 2059– for women to finally reach pay parity”. This startling fact is shocking considering women will continue to make less than men for a long time unless something changes. That change could be full advocacy and petitioning for equal pay amongst all women, just like actress Patricia Arquette did. After winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar at the 2015 Academy Awards, Arquette ended her speech saying: “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.” There is now a petition, Ratify The Equal Rights Amendment, that Patricia Arquette made on change.org and it needs 24,928 more people to reach the goal of 150,000 people. Creating more and more of these petitions and getting the message out into the world will produce more social justice in gender. But we can’t stop at just that; our society needs to be tenacious and determined to make sure that this issue is solved because they firmly believe that it is the right thing to do. By doing so, we will be taking a huge step forward in the right direction of becoming a just
Miller, Claire Cain. "Pay Gap Is Because of Gender, Not Jobs." The New York Times. The New York Times, 23 Apr. 2014. Web. 18 May 2014. .
Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddess, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Schocken Books. 1975.
During a review by Vox, of the gender biases in Hollywood that were reported by the data visualization website Polygraph, over 2,000 movies underwent scrutiny in determining why men have more dialogue in movies, even in those that are supposed to be focused on the lead female characters. In what was stated to be one of the largest analyses of script reviews of all time, it was determined that the male characters within the study overrule women in over 78% of the analyzed films. This was concluded through a cross-analysis of character information such as name, gender, and age, with the information reported by the popular movie database, IMDB. The results of their study are astonishing. In the 2,005 screenplays across all movie genres that were reviewed by Polygraph, only two movies were delivered 100% by the lead female character. Conversely, the male dominated list has not only the largest number of results;
...at each character plays, giving priority to one over the rest even though the movie is not just about that one character. So the poster can be seen as influenced by one character. All of this sums up to an unbalanced Hollywood that statistically shows how inclined it is toward having an extreme amount of white male leading characters vs a very reduced amount of women and minorities as leading characters making it hard for a change to occur. All Humans enjoy being among people who are similar to them so Hollywood is more likely to keep on choosing white males over other types of people because of the fact that they share similar traits. So even if in the future the minority population grows and say that more women apply for jobs in the movie industry, the trend is most likely going to survive and it will still be seen that they always prefer white males in Hollywood.
Even though women have increased their presence in higher-paying jobs traditionally dominated by men, such as professional and managerial positions, women as a whole continue to work in lower-paying occupations than men do. Some part of the pay gap may also be due to gender discrimination women are about twice as likely as men to say they had been discriminated against at work because of their gender. I have a dream
Despite government regulations to promote equality within the workplace, women’s salaries continue to lag behind males in similar career with similar experiences. According to research performed by Blau & Kahn (2007) “women salaries averaged about 60% of men’s until the 1970s and rose to nearly 80% by the 1990s” (as cited in Bendick, Jr. & Nunes, 2012, p.244). Today, women on average earn approximately $.81 for every dollar that men earn in the United States (Guy and Fenley P.41 2014).