Actors make more then Actresses, lets talk about it.
Unfortunatly, the fact that men make more then women in the workplace isn’t a shocking tidbit of information. In a 2020 study done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, women were only making 82.3% of the annual earnings in comparison for thier male counterparts. Tha gap is even wider for women of color.
If that isn’t enough to paint a picture for you, the US Department of Labor has an interactive visualization chart were you can see the comparisons of women and men in the same feild for over 300 diffrent careers. Spoiler alert, it’s upsetting.
One of he careers you see the discrepincies most prevelently is that of hollywood movies and tv shows. These productions have a track record of paying thier male stars astronomically more then their female talent, and it’s getting quite ridiculous.
This isn’t something new, take a look at , a comparison of the highest-paid male and female actors from 2017. The highest paid actress of that year, Emma Stone, made $26 million which is incredibly impressive…but why was it so much lower then the highest paid actor of the year Mark Wahlberg, who brought home $68 million?
Let’s look at more recent numbers. The highest paid actor of 2022, Dwayne Johnson, has been the highest paid actor for two years in a row and has earned $87.5 million this year. And the female highest earner? Sofiia Vergara earned an astonishing $43 million —again, very impressive but a little more then 50% below the amount earn by “The Rock.”
This diffrence goes way beyond the understandable. Yes, it would make more sense for one who has won an Oscar, was more established in the industry, or brings more notoriety to a film then another to be paid more. They had worked hard, reaped the bennifits, and deserved to be compensated justly.
But it is in the case where the actress and actor are on the same playing feild where this is absolutly sickening.
Take what occured during filiming of “The Force Awakens.” While Carrie Fischer was paid in the “low-seven-figure range,” for reprising her role of Princess Liea, her long time costar Harrison Ford walked away with much more. Ford apparently made somewhere between $10 million and $20 million for his return as Han Solo. This and so many similar storys can be found all over the internet (here are four more for your reading pleasure).
So again I ask why? Why are these mega talented woman being glossed over and being payed less then their male costars?
Some say it’s the opprotunities. In a study done by the The New York Film Academy found that when their was a female director, there was a 10.6% increase of female characters in the project. That number jusps another 8.7% when there was a female screen writer apart of the project. Yet these projects aren’t easy to come by — take for example the fact that in 2016 out of the 250 highest grossing films only 17 movies had female directors.
Steps have been taken to draw more attention to this. Celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence have campaigned for better pay and have done thier part to draw attention to the unfair treatment.
In 2014, after a leak revieled that she and her female costars earned less then thier male costarts, Lawrence wrote “I would be lying if I didn’t say there was an element of wanting to be liked that influenced my decision to close the deal without a real fight. I didn’t want to seem ‘difficult’ or ‘spoiled.’ 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.”
And while at one time this was heavily talked about it seems as time went on the movements lost more and more traction. This is something we cannot sweep under the rug and we cannot be silent about. If we don’t discuss this treatment, if we are not vocal about how frustrating this is nothing will change. Women deserve to be treated the same, and paid fairly for their work. No ifs, ands or buts.
