Women have been fighting for equality, especially in the workplace, for quite some time now. However, the huge gap between men and women’s privileges is still very evident in many fields. In Hollywood, for example, Forbes’ top 10 highest-paid actors in 2018 accumulated a total of $748.5 million, while their women counterparts amassed only $186 million in total.
Julianne Moore’s case
Several award-winning actresses like Julianne Moore admitted that they don’t receive equal pay for the movies they participate in. The American actress said she only gets paid fairly in her independent film projects where all casts split a percentage of the revenue instead of agreeing to a fixed upfront salary. Unfortunately, in her bigger Hollywood ventures, the hierarchy is always in favor of the male actors.
Julianne Moore received numerous recognitions including one Oscar trophy out of five nominations, nine Golden Globe nominations in which she won two of them. She also took home two out of seven SAG nominations, and one out of four BAFTA nominations. Her casting in the melodrama As the World Turns earned her a Daytime Emmy Award, and her role in the television movie Game Changed gained her another Emmy trophy.
Women vs Gender Pay Gap
Despite all the triumphs that the female stars accomplish, male actors with the same reputation still earns fatter paycheck than them. With the hope of winning justice from the gender pay gap, more actresses like Jennifer Lawrence, Patricia Arquette, and Emma Stone voiced out their concerns regarding this matter.
Lawrence wrote a Lenny Letter essay way back in 2015 called Why Do I Make Less Than My Male Co-Stars, while Arquette took the opportunity to express her thoughts on wage equality on her Academy Awards acceptance speech to champion in 2005.
Meanwhile, Stone revealed that in order for her to gain parity of income between her male co-stars, they had to take pay cuts for her. Without her male co-stars standing up for her, the system will never give her equal quote compare to her fellow male stars.
We Can Only Hope For the Best
The ladies of Hollywood still have a long battle ahead of them in regard to this matter. In the present-day, the highest-grossing actress of 2018, Scarlett Johansson, with approximately $40.5 million earnings, doesn’t even stand a chance against the sixth highest-grossing actor of 2018, Will Smith who amassed around $42 million.
George Clooney tops the ranking for the male category with an estimated amount of $239 million. That amount is greater than all the total earnings of all ten female actresses on the list.
Only time can tell what the future holds regarding this gender salary inequality. Who knows, maybe a female star will set a world-record of beating a male star’s salary in the next few years or so.
