Women in Hollywood: plenty of talk but little change on equal pay

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/29/hollywood-equal-pay-women-change-yet-to-come

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When Patricia Arquette strode on stage to collect her Oscar for best supporting actress in February it was no surprise. She had been the favourite for her performance in Boyhood.

Clutching the statuette, reading breathlessly from a crumpled sheet of paper, she lauded fellow nominees, thanked other members of the cast and crew members and paid tribute to friends and relatives, as per tradition.

The brief speech ended, however, with a passionate, unexpected call to battle. “To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights,” said Arquette, her voice rising. “It’s time to have wage equality once and for all. And equal rights for women in the United States of America.”

The exhortation ricocheted through the Dolby theatre. Meryl Streep pumped her arms as the audience cheered, hooted and applauded. At a press conference backstage the media feted Arquette like a conquering hero.

Hollywood felt ripe for gender revolt. Hacked emails from Sony Pictures had recently revealed that Jennifer Lawrence earned significantly less than male co-stars in the film American Hustle, prompting accusations of systematic discrimination in the film industry.

A procession of high-profile female actors echoed Arquette’s appeal throughout the year, using interviews as platforms to assail inequality in Hollywood, a supposed bastion of liberalism, and demand change.

As the industry polishes gongs in preparation for another awards season, however, there is no full-blown feminist insurrection. Calls to end inequality still reverberate but have yet to translate into visible, concrete change.

“That it’s come to the surface is a good thing. But it’s still rhetoric, not backed by facts, that’s my sense,” said Peter Bart, a film producer and editor at Variety.

Industry players and observers agree that publicity about pay inequality should help female actors negotiate better deals but warn that progress could be slow, uneven and largely invisible.

“The public attention to the issue is helpful in that it makes it easier for actresses, directors, writers and others to bring up pay as an issue,” said Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television, Film & New Media at San Diego State University.

“That said, the wage issue is part of the larger gender problem in the mainstream film industry. Until women are considered to be equal players, their pay will most likely be lower than that of their male colleagues.”

There is consensus that pay discrimination exists in Hollywood but, with most salaries veiled in secrecy, no one knows how bad it really is.

According to US labour department data, women in the arts, entertainment, sports and media industries earned 85% of male counterparts’ pay last year. For women working full time in all sectors, the figure was 82.5%.

A report by the Journal of Management Inquiry found that female stars tended to see earnings fall after the age of 34 whereas those of men peaked around the age of 51 and then stayed stable.

“Hollywood salaries seem to be one of the best-kept secrets. But there is proof now,” said Irene De Pater, who co-wrote that report. “Academic research has indicated that there is a quite considerable gender/age wage gap.”

Anecdotal evidence of unfairness goes back decades. A recent biography about Barbara Stanwyck detailed bitter clashes with studios over compensation in the 1930s. Julia Phillips, who produced classics such as The Sting and Taxi Driver, described similar battles in her 1991 memoir You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again.

“It’s always been brewing,” said Christina Pickles, who is best known for roles in St Elsewhere and Friends. “So thank you Patricia Arquette and all powerful women in Hollywood for keeping this important question going for all women.”

Arquette’s Oscar speech uncorked grievances that continue to spill out. Sharon Stone recently recalled weeping over unequal salaries after the release of Basic Instinct in 1992. “No one wanted to pay me. I remember sitting in my kitchen with my manager and just crying and saying: ‘I’m not going to work until I get paid.’ I still got paid so much less than any men.”

In October, Lawrence, the star of The Hunger Games franchise, faulted herself for earning less than American Hustle male co-stars. “When the Sony hack happened and I found out how much less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks, I didn’t get mad at Sony. I got mad at myself. I failed as a negotiator because I gave up early.” She blamed a need to be liked, or a fear of seeming “difficult” or “spoilt”, and vowed to toughen up.

Emma Watson, actor and goodwill ambassador for UN Women, tweeted: “O Jennifer Lawrence I love you so.” Jessica Chastain, who starred in Zero Dark Thirty and The Martian, and the director Elizabeth Banks, also cheered the essay.

Rooney Mara, the Oscar-nominated star of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, revealed that male co-stars had earned double her salary. “It’s just a reality of the time that we live in. To me, it’s frustrating, but at the same time, I’m just grateful to be getting paid at all for what I do.”

With Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Charlize Theron, Reese Witherspoon and Toni Collette also chiming in, Hollywood’s sorority appears to be a united – and gilded – part of a wider struggle for equality, a struggle that includes the push for a $15 minimum wage and curbs on Wall Street excess.

The campaign had history as well as justice on its side, said Bart, the producer, because today’s male actors cannot “open” a picture on their star power alone, in contrast to higher-wattage predecessors such as Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne. “That phenomenon doesn’t really exist any more.”

Usually you don’t talk about the financial stuff. But you know what? It’s time to start doing that

The momentum unleashed by Arquette boasts one clear-cut victory: it helped spur California’s Fair Pay Act, one of the toughest pay equity laws in the US. Governor Jerry Brown signed it into law in October, calling it a milestone for women in California who work full time but are paid a median of 84 cents for every dollar paid to men.

Despite the legislative breakthrough and supportive media drumbeat, however, Hollywood’s female actors still face an uphill struggle.

For starters, the new law probably will not help them much, said Geoffrey DeBoskey, a leading Los Angeles employment lawyer with the firm Sidley Austin. Actors are often paid not by studios but by their own companies, which have contracts with studios, so technically they are paying themselves.

Another reason is hesitation to sue. “There’s a perception that it could result in reduced work,” said DeBoskey. “And people at this level tend to value privacy. Litigation makes issues related to their performance and compensation public.”

The lawyer agreed with Amy Pascal, the former head of Sony Pictures, who said the onus was on female actors to demand what they were worth – and to walk away if not satisfied. “If the industry is struggling to fill roles then that will impact compensation.”

But as the queues of hopefuls outside casting auditions around Los Angeles testify, the industry is hardly struggling to fill roles. In a hyper-competitive environment where everyone worries about their next job few, if any, dare shun work. The advent of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and other small-screen players has not changed that.

“Only turn down work if [you] are sure it can become a front-page story,” said Pickles, who played Judy Geller, the mother of Ross and Monica, in Friends. “For less powerful actors to reject work is just a waste of time and money – pointless.”

One actor who did walk away was Sienna Miller, who told Vogue she had rejected a two-person Broadway play after learning she would earn less than half her male co-star’s wage. “The only way is to make a stand,” she said. “We are going to have to make sacrifices to make change. I want to turn up and feel dignified.”

Structural imbalance also makes life tough for women behind the camera. Men dominate nearly all levels of film-making and they disproportionately hire other men, who gain skills, experience and bargaining leverage, a self-perpetuating loop.

When women do reach influential positions they hire more women, according to a study titled Women and the Big Picture: behind-the-scenes employment on the top 700 films of 2014. It found that on films with female directors, for instance, 52% of writers were women, versus 8% for those films with exclusively male directors.

Bias may be deeply entrenched but male actors can help remedy the pay imbalance with a simple, if intimate, innovation: revealing their pay to female co-stars.

Related: The real Hollywood scandal: why Jennifer Lawrence, Angelina Jolie and other female stars get ripped off

One, at least, has vowed to do so. Bradley Cooper, who according to Forbes has earned $41.5m in the past year, recently declared he would collaborate with female co-stars in pre-production negotiations to avoid another American Hustle-style debacle.

“I don’t know where it’s changing otherwise but that’s something that I could do,” he told Reuters. “Usually you don’t talk about the financial stuff – you have people. But you know what? It’s time to start doing that.”

Lauzen, of the Center for the Study of Women in Television, Film & New Media, said Bradley’s promise was tremendously important. “If change is going to occur, men will need to be part of the solution.”