Why do male movie stars earn more than their female counterparts?
The Pay gap between male and female movie stars is a hotly debated topic in the Hollywood entertainment industry. Jennifer Lawrence also addressed her displeasure with this injustice on her Facebook page. The debate is not an easy one: a lot of people scoff at movie stars like Lawrence. She allows herself “boldly” to curse her salary, to express her displeasure publicly, while others gnaw on the hunger cloth. After all, the gap between the rich and the poor is really big.
As a reminder, the Hollywood star complained that she was an actress in the film “American Hustle“Only got 7% of the film revenues. Your male colleagues, on the other hand, were able to win over 9%. With the enormous box office earnings of “American Hustle” (already on the first weekend the $ 20 million limit exceeded!) a few percentages are already several million US dollars.
Male movie stars like Christian Bale and Jeremy Renner deserve more than their female co-stars
With that in mind, the actress’s resentment may make more sense. The renowned actress partly blames herself: “I just gave up on the negotiations too quickly,” said Jennifer Lawrence battle!”.
And yet: The actress’s appeal sparked a wave of outrage on gender issues. In a recent article in Forbes magazine it was revealed that not only is the case the actress complained about, but that it is along with well-known movie stars as well other professional groups are affected…
… but let’s first look at the movie stars: The inequality in pay is not just a fictitious deficit that arose from the personal idea of financial justice – no, it is a real one. As mentioned above, Lawrence and her co-star Amy Adams were able to make a whopping 7% of the film’s revenue through contract. That sounds pretty good, some would say. And it does so until you find out that Christian Bale and Jeremy Renner made 9%. This is just one example of a trend that has been going on for decades. The trend can be traced back to a large number of discriminatory factors in the male-dominated world of Hollywood.
Not only do women in Hollywood feel this blow on payday, it can already be heard on the day they are hired. Only 28.1% of the roles in the 100 most successful films of 2014 were occupied by women. People (especially women again) from other ethnic groups have it even more difficult, only 17 of these 100 successful films had speaking roles for “ethnically disproportionately represented groups”. This is a comparatively embarrassing situation considering the diverse and very diverse target audiences in the United States and around the world.
However, if you are within the financial range of a typical middle-class worker, it will be difficult to sympathize with the problem of female performers – understandably. But these financial inequality between the sexes runs all the way down. It goes down to the workers, extras and stage assistants who make such films possible in the first place, including the cutters and cameramen. Women make up only a small proportion of the workforce in the film industry, to be precise: 11.2% of the (screenplay) writers, 18.9% of the producers and only 1.9% of the directors. Many of them are paid far less benevolently than their male counterparts.
The question of reasons is obvious. One of the reasons is that the few women who manage to find a job in this man-dominated world feel too insecure to bargain for higher salaries. Even if the fee after the negotiations were as high as that of the male stars who do the same job. This is at least the result of a recent survey by “Entertainment Weekly” out.
With all the injustice and bad conditions, it is easy to become pessimistic. One is outraged by the business environment in which one finds oneself. But there is also good news: In the television landscape, for example, the wage gap between men and women is smaller. This fact is not due to the patronizing nature of the executives in the television landscape, but to the fact that casting agencies that work for television usually negotiate on a common contractual basis – according to the motto: “Everyone gets the same, then Nobody complains either. ”But another aspect of this gender inequality still remains: women are comparatively understaffed in the television landscape, if you contrast the number of male stars, even if there are exceptions that reverse these theses in every respect, such as Oprah Winfrey.
Interestingly, this trend is not present in the music industry, or at least not as noticeable. One extreme example shows that the highest earning music star last year was Katy Perry, a woman. She could be impressive in 2014 $ 135 million accumulate. These are whole $ 45 million more than the highest earning male music star, Garth Brooks.
Image sources:
Jennifer Lawrence: kathclick / Bigstock.com
Oprah Winfrey: Joe Seer / Bigstock.com
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