After hackers leaked thousands of e-mails from Sony Pictures bigwigs last year, Jennifer Lawrence, arguably America's most marketable actress, learned she earned significantly less money than her male co-stars in 2013’s award-winning "American Hustle."
“Jeremy Renner, Christian Bale, and Bradley Cooper all fought and succeeded in negotiating powerful deals for themselves,” Lawrence wrote. “If anything, I’m sure they were commended for being fierce and tactical, while I was busy worrying about coming across as a brat and not getting my fair share.”
The e-mails confirmed her fears.
“Another leaked Sony email revealed a producer referring to a fellow lead actress in a negotiation as a ‘spoiled brat,’” she wrote. “For some reason, I just can’t picture someone saying that about a man.”
Lawrence, who made about $52 million in Forbes’s most recent 12-month count and became Hollywood's most highly paid actress, acknowledges her struggle isn’t “relatable” to the average working woman. But the gender wage gap persists in virtually every occupation, ultra-prestigious and entry-level.
In 2014, women working full-time jobs made only 79 cents for every dollar earned by men, a difference of 21 percent. The disparities widen across racial lines: Black women made 64 cents and Hispanic women made 54 cents for every dollar earned by white men.
A recent report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research predicts U.S. women won’t reach pay parity with men until 2058.
Women in entertainment and media, roles with high visibility and social influence, take home about 85 percent of their male colleagues’ pay, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In Hollywood, the mirror in which we reflect our cultural values, for better or worse, several actresses have condemned the inequity on principle. Amanda Seyfried told the Sunday Times in July she was once paid 10 percent of what her male co-star of equal fame received.
After blasting the wage gap during her Oscars acceptance speech, Patricia Arquette told David Letterman in March, “It’s just strange in 2015 that we’re living like we’re in 1915.”
A rare, high-profile flash of pay transparency, courtesy of the Sony hack, shows no woman is immune.
Andrew Gumpert, a Columbia Pictures executive, wrote to Sony heads in a 2013 e-mail about the “points,” or back-end compensation, that Lawrence and her co-stars would receive on "American Hustle," which grossed more than $251 million worldwide.
Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale and Jeremy Renner would earn 9 percent. Lawrence and Amy Adams, who’d received more Academy Award nominations than her male colleagues, would earn 7 percent.
(The gap in earnings between the men and women? About 23 percent.)
Gumpert noted this was “unfair,” but the numbers never changed.
Lawrence, meanwhile, blamed herself for not negotiating harder.
“I’m over trying to find the ‘adorable’ way to state my opinion and still be likable!” she wrote. “I don’t think I’ve ever worked for a man in charge who spent time contemplating what angle he should use to have his voice heard. It’s just heard.”
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