Making my way back on my daily commute from university to home, ear phones plugged in and proceeding to zone out from the humdrum of the city. I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed and stopped momentarily on an article on Robin Wright’s demand for equal pay for acting in the critically acclaimed series, House of Cards. In good timing, Chaka Khan ‘s ‘I’m Every Woman’ proceeded to play on my Spotify playlist and this immediately struck a chord with me.
Growing up, as a female, you would imagine that equality was embedded in our society from the outset. However, as the years go on and you slowly start noticing the minor things that differentiate between the genders. Perhaps the time when you completed a set of allocated chores but received a sum significantly less than what your male sibling received. Perhaps the time you worked at a café as a waitress and came to discover the boss was paying you significantly less to your male colleague. Or even perhaps even the time you were in a playground and proceeding to go down the slide, only to be interrupted by a boy and told to go after him.
Simply, because he was a male.
However, the point today isn’t to discuss the deeply entrenched patriarchal norms within society, we’ll leave that for another day.
Males might be inclined to roll their eyes at this point, I don’t blame you.
The point being, we need an open conversation on pay inequality. If female entertainment figures such as the likes of Robin Wright, who plays Claire Underwood, the ominous co-conspirator to President Frank Underwood, demand to be paid the same as co-star Kevin Spacey for her work on "House of Cards.”, in the presence of a roomful of activists, philanthropists and media. Then there’s clearly something wrong with the time we live in.
Privileged white women you say? I see a female willing to engage in an educated dialogue about pay inequality.
Robin Wright is just one name in this new wave of feminism. Many others have also raised their voices in the recent times, through their respective platforms of works and professions. Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Lawrence, Reese Witherspoon, Jessica Chastain are just some common household names that have made an effort to bring public awareness to this deeply entrenched issue. According to Forbes list for the 10 highest-paid movie actors in 2015, the list leader, Robert Downey Jr. accumulated a total wealth of $431 million. In comparison, the list for the 10 highest-paid movie actresses, Jennifer Lawrence, being the highest paid actress, made only $218 million. If you do the math, Jennifer Lawrence was paid 51% of her male counterpart on the list.
It’s absurd that we’re still having these conversations in 2016 about unequal pay for equal work. In the words of Patricia Arquette at the Oscars in 2015, it's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women. This is one conversation that cannot be avoided.
It’s time that women realised that settling for less settles nothing. It’s time we realised that we are collectively in this wage war together.
I’m Every Woman.
