ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty ImagesWhen Jennifer Lawrence penned her funny, bracing and spot-on essay about her frustration over being paid less than her male costars last week, it generated a lot of buzz and set off discussions (and justifiable bouts of anger) from her Hollywood peers, both male and female alike.
There's a palpable feeling in the industry that, this time around, people may truly be ready to make a change. The recent scrutiny on the gender wage gap caps off a refreshingly tumultuous year in which the issue seems to have been more pressing than ever before. The fight for equal pay is something that's been simmering (albeit at a low profile) in politics for a good long while, with mentions popping up on campaign trails and in candidate speeches, but despite the fact that women have never been paid at a rate comparable to men in Hollywood, the calls for change are actually a pretty new phenomenon, relatively speaking.
As such, an issue as important as this one is worth scrutinizing, so let's take a look back at how the uprising built up.
A Sobering Look at the Numbers:
Almost everyone is familiar with Forbes' annual list of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood. Celebrities can often be cagey about their actual net worth and, much like any other job, individual salaries for specific movies aren't made public, so every summer when these figures are released it's a great chance to both find out who's successful in Tinseltown and feel very, very bad about your own job. But what a lot of people don't realize is that it wasn't until 2008 that the publication began separating these lists out into men and women. In, say, 2007, one would have to scroll back for ages (or, more specifically, eight pages) to find the first female in the list of top salaries.
Forbes decided to call out this huge wage disparity in its 2008 report, citing the shocking figure that leading men out-earned women two to one that year. They attributed the injustice to the studios' belief that men were the more reliable movie stars and also the more desirable audience members to cater to.
In the following years salaries continued to be just as uneven as ever before—with the top-paid actor consistently earning practically double the top-paid actress—but with the issue steadily staying out of the en vogue pop culture discussions. There's no doubt that it was on the minds of in-the-know actresses, but no one was pulling a Norma Rae about it. In 2011 Forbes yet again issued a word of caution with a release of that year's salary results. This time it came with another observation.
The mag noted that there were a few occasions when women did come close to high figures of Hollywood's biggest actors, like in 2010 when Sandra Bullock earned $56 million to Johnny Depp's $75 million. But that doesn't last long, because women aren't given the big box office-fronting roles; people still want to see "men blowing things up." Right.
Starting to Ask the Hard Questions:
The topic popped up again in May 2013, when Forbes (sensing a trend here? Perhaps the finance mag deserves as much credit as Patricia Arquette) sat down with none other than then-Sony studio head Amy Pascal to grill her on the still-under-the-radar wage gap. This was well before she became the center of controversy on the matter, but her words were fascinating. She explained the situation as this: That the big stars in Hollywood (as in the Jennifer Lawrence's and the Angelina Jolie's) actually get paid pretty much the same per movie, but that the averages don't work because there are so few of those parts for women to star in. And she attributed that to an institutional problem.
"[A woman] has to go through so many layers of rejection by the powers-that-be," to get to a truly powerful position in Hollywood, she said. "And I think there's a whole unconscious mountain."
Pascal also admitted that it's partly her responsibility to make a place for women in the industry—studios have to make movies with parts for women that matter, so they can demand those higher paychecks. Which is quite ironic considering the next time Pascal would figure into the wage fight.
Just seven short months later, Pascal would engage in the email exchange that would set off the movement we're currently embroiled in. Yep, these are the American Hustle salaries that got J Lawr so worked up. When the Sony hack made the studio's private dealings public, it was revealed that the male cast members of the Oscar-nominated flick were given nine points (that's a percentage of the film's future profits) while the women were given seven. Sadly, Pascal gave the deal her okay.
These revelations seemed to spread like wildfire and ignite a whole new bout of anger and frustration at the current Hollywood system. Even though most members of the industry had been living and working in this status quo for years (or decades), there's nothing like a dramatic outing by a hostile foreign country to bring light to an old issue. Charlize Theron was the first to take this newfound momentum and run with it, by demanding to be paid the same $10-million-dollar-plus paycheck for the upcoming flick The Huntsman as her costar Chris Hemsworth. And, what do ya know? It worked.
People (very rightly so) had a lot of questions for Amy Pascal concerning the email revelations (and her subsequent firing), and one week before the Oscars she gave her first post-hack interview. She took a decidedly harsher POV on the wage issue (although one can hardly blame her for feeling callous towards the industry), saying that Hollywood is a business—a business where execs will pay anyone less who doesn't ask for more. "They [women] should know what they're worth," she lectured. "Women shouldn't take less."
It's a harsh sentiment, but it jives with Lawrence's own feelings of anger towards herself for not demanding what she deserved.
And it seems Jennifer wasn't the only one listening to the advice, because shortly afterwards Patricia Arquette gave her history-making Oscars speech calling for wage equality. "To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else's equal rights," she yelled from the podium. "It's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America."
Her words were famously well-received, and it goes to be said that there's nothing like a powerful sermon on national TV to rally the masses. And the ensuing Meryl Streep memes didn't hurt either.
So What Now?
The Boyhood actress really set things in motion, because later that spring the ACLU filed a request asking for a formal government investigation into what they called an "under-representation of women directors" in Hollywood. It may not be as flashy as Charlize Theron demanding millions of dollars, but it was another step towards beginning formal changes.
Since then, 2015 has been bookmarked by pretty much every actress imaginable speaking out on the inequalities they've faced, whether it was Amanda Seyfried telling the Sunday Times that she was once paid "10%" of anonymous male costar or Emily Blunt stating that she was no longer scared of walking away from a movie that wasn't willing to pay her equally.
This month the movement won a big, if caveat-filled, victory via the California Fair Wage Act. The bill, signed into law by governor Jerry Brown, is first and foremost meant to eliminate wage gaps in industries across the board (think hospitality and retail gigs), by requiring similar pay for "similar" work instead of "equal" work. But, experts believe it could have an impact on the film sector. According to the Los Angeles Times, studios will now have to make salaries more of a science—factoring in an actor's past box office performance, major awards wins or nominations and the physical demands of the role in question—instead of just arbitrarily handing out paychecks based on a star's power or ability to negotiate.
Of course, it should be noted that it remains to be seen how this all turns out, and actresses who use their own separate companies to book roles might end up being exempt from the new law. But progress is progress!
That brings us to Lawrence's acclaimed Op-Ed. The wage gap fight has been one with ebbs and flows, and like any movement there are times when the cause is trendier than ever. But pop culture today is much different than it was even five years ago, when Forbes was trying to speak out. Social media is freakishly powerful, and it seems that phenomenon could make statements like Jennifer's or Patricia's land with more weight than their predecessors. It's easier for the people to get behind a cause when they can do it from their laptop, so don't be surprised if this is just the start.
Clearly the biggest question is whether all of this history can translate into real, substantive change. We know Jennifer Lawrence can make a splash on the Internet, but can she make a splash in her negotiations? How will this play out in the back rooms of studios and agencies? Actresses will have to work up the courage to say no to projects when they need to, and perhaps just as importantly, their male counterparts will have to be willing to go along with the fight, too.
It's all playing out in real time and incredibly unpredictable, but we'll be here watching and not-so-patiently waiting.