Wednesday, September 28, 2011

It'a problem even in Hollywood


It seems that the women rights movement has made huge achievements in the Western countries. Women can now not only vote, but even run for White House. One would think that Hollywood is a place where women have equal opportunities with men, but it is not true. There are of course female directors, female producers and studio bosses. But it's all an illusion.
For several years, reading Forbes articles about the total compensations of the most popular actors and actresses, I paid attention to how big is a gap in salaries between men and women. Last year, for example, 10 most popular actors earned $349 million, and 10 most popular actresses - $252 million. Digging further. Hollywood male screenwriter earned on average $5 thousand more per year than female writers, when it comes to television, and $42 thousand more when it comes to movies. That is for every $100 received for the script where the author a man, women get only $58.
Another fact since the founding of Oscar, female directors were nominated for "Oscar" four times only (0.75% of total nominees in this category). And only one of them won the award - Kathryn Bigelow, with 2009's The Hurt Locker.
Another problem is age. Actors over 70 like Jack Nicholson or Clint Eastwood continue to work. But most actresses 45-50 years, except may be Meryl Streep, are often forced to play secondary roles, unloved aged wives, mothers, even grandmothers. Again, the fact from "Oscar" history: over the past 20 years the only woman over 50 who won the award as "Best Actress" was Helen Mirren.
Someone might say if I made 20 million dollars I would not care if someone makes 5 millions more. This is true, but I am not discussing how big the compensations in Hollywood are. I just want to point that even if Hollywood looks like an advanced place where race or sexual orientation is not issue, there is still women inequality. And if the problem exists in Hollywod, what we can say about the rest of the society?

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