Since it is the year 2015, it only seems logical that women would earn an equal salary to men for doing the same exact job.
Apparently Hollywood, along with the rest of the country, has still yet to receive that memo.
Forbes released their annual list of the world’s highest-paid actresses Thursday, which was topped by household names like Scarlett Johansson, Melissa McCarthy and Jennifer Aniston.
Unsurprisingly, the girl on fire herself, Jennifer Lawrence, snagged the number one spot on the list with a salary of $52 million.
This sounds wonderful until you take a glance over at the men’s list which was released earlier this month and note that Robert Downey Jr., the highest-paid male actor, raked in a whopping $80 million.
That’s a lot of Iron Man and Avengers money. And while many might argue that RDJ’s roles in superhero movies bump his pay grade, let’s not forget that Lawrence has her own saga franchise and she’s also involved in the Marvel money making machine.
While it makes me a little sick to try to rationalize why someone deserves a $28 million-pay raise, these lists point out a gap in gender equality that is still prevalent.
Does this mean Lawrence did not work as hard as Downey Jr.?
Or more importantly, that the average American woman does not work as hard as the average American man?
Even more revealing is the fact that the list named 34 men, whereas only 18 women made the cut.
This may seem harmless at a glance, but in reality it says that there were not enough female actresses that made a salary worth noting, so they cut the list short.
Also, only four actresses in the world made more than $20 million, while an astonishing 21 actors made that much or more.
But, why should you care?
According to the American Association of University Women, all women are affected by the gender pay gap.
Moreover, the pay gap is worse for women of color and increases with age.
Surprisingly, the AAUW even states that the gap may become larger when looking at women and men who have completed more levels of education, citing that “at every level of academic achievement, women’s median earnings are less than men’s earnings, and in some cases, the gender pay gap is larger at higher levels of education.”
So essentially, it’s expected that I pay to attend the same type of university as a man, receive the same education as a man, go into the same amount of debt funding my education as a man, but then be willing to be paid less than that same man?
How disheartening.
No wonder so many women expect their dates to pick up the tab when they are out to dinner.
Here’s a crazy idea, if we’re going to continue to pay women less than men, how about we make the cost of living cheaper for women as well?
Discounted housing, groceries, gas, education, you name it.
This may sound outrageous to some, but not nearly as outrageous as this gross social injustice.
After all, is equality really too much to ask for?
tatadams@indiana.edu
