People are paying more attention to how unfairly women are treated in Hollywood.
With the recent revelation that 37-year-old actress Maggie Gyllenhaal was deemed too old to play a yet-unnamed 55-year-old actor’s love interest in a movie and news that Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin were paid the same as their male co-stars even though Fonda and Tomlin are the main characters whose names are the title of the show, it has come to a fever pitch of unfairness.
This clip from AJ+ can clue you in a bit more:
Here are a few jarring facts from the video, in case you can’t play it at the moment.
- In 2014, women had speaking roles only 30% of the time.
- That’s only 5% more than in the 1940s and ’50s.
- In 2014, women made up a total of 13% of lead roles.
- Considering women are half of the population, that is an absurdly small number.
- The top 10 earning actresses made about half of what their male counterparts made in 2014.
Yeah, I know.
One woman, Maria Giese, is doing something about it.
The film director has filed a complaint with the ACLU, saying that Directors Guild of America is overwhelmingly male, and that limited perspective affects almost every part of the movie industry.
Giese’s complaint shines an important light on the old boys’ club of Hollywood, and that it’s gone on long enough.
If the industry has only one type of voice at the top of the heap…
…they’re missing out on the value of a different perspective, which makes movies much more interesting.
I, for one, don’t want to watch the same movie over and over. Do you?
