Pop Culture Tuesday - Highlighting the Hollywood Gender Pay Gap

Last Thursday, Forbes Magazine released their lost of the top-earning actresses of 2015, a few days after they released the actor list. Only the top 3 actresses earned over $20 million while the top 21 men earned over that amount.

Do you want to know why? Because as long as Hollywood and the entertainment industry, women have seriously been underappreciated and underrepresented. Leading roles for women that don't require women to be overtly sexualised or play the uptight 'mum' like figure to the fun-loving 'dad' are incredibly few and far between.

It also highlights that if an actor and actress have the roughly the exact amount of screen time - the man is given a bigger cut, showcased in David O. Russell's film American Hustle in which the female lead, Amy Adams, earned less than Jeremy Renner, who was a supporting member of the cast. WHY!? But in a normal Hollywood film, the male lead earns more than the female supporter, so why on earth wasn't that the case in this instance!? All that was different was the that the gender roles were reversed!

However, in all the  actresses in Hollywood, women of colour are the most affected. They are the most likely to not have speaking parts, be sexualised & fetishized (particularly Latinx women) and earn the least amount. How is that fair!? Hollywood preaches diversity in the films they deem to be 'good' but they never seem to put it into practice.


The Hollywood Gender Pay Gap has long been showcased, from the 'silent movie' era to the rise of the 'talkies' and it's only been over these past few years, that women are fighting back. Charlize Theron recently revealed that she demanded she was given the same cut as he male co-star Chris Hemsworth, in their upcoming film Snow White and the Huntsman 2 so should she! I am sick of seeing women constantly undermined in the entertainment industry because of gender. The Hollywood Gender Pay Gap isn't directly linked to the Gender Pay Gap in other industries, but more so in the lack of strong, complex roles for women and as a result, many actresses find themselves drawn to the 'typical' roles out of fear of becoming irrelevant and many just want to have a good income.