By Kacie Svoboda
On Sunday night, the 87th annual Oscars were presented in Hollywood. Each year, the acceptance speeches present a mixed bag of raw emotion, shocked ramblings or calls for support of political or social causes. Patricia Arquette delivered one of the most enthusiastically received speeches when she ended her acceptance for Best Supporting Actress in “Boyhood” with a message that got the rousing approval of the audience and an emphatic “Yes” from Meryl Streep.
“To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America,” said Arquette.
The pay discrepancy in Hollywood was recently put under a spotlight by the hacking of Sony Studios and the release of confidential studio documents and emails. The publicized information revealed that several actresses were paid considerably less than their male co-stars and even Sony’s Columbia Pictures co-president of production Hannah Minghella earns close to $1 million less than a male executive with the same title.
But the gender pay gap isn’t just a Tinsel Town issue. According to a 2012 Census Bureau survey, American women were still paid only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men holding full-time, year-round jobs. In a year, this would add up to an $11,500 difference between men and women who held identical positions.
And I agree with Arquette that it’s time for this to change — since as of 2012, the gender pay gap had remained relatively the same for 11 years.
Now excepting the fact that I’m a woman, this issue is not necessarily a personal one. I believe I’ve been paid fairly at the other jobs I’ve held and really have no anecdotal evidence of a gender pay gap at any of them. However, I’m well aware that this is not the norm and am concerned about my financial future if this does not change, as the pay gap typically increases the further up the career ladder you go.
In a survey conducted by BuzzFeed, the entry-level positions in journalism were fairly comparable for women and men. However, the median pay for senior non-managers was $77,500 per year for women, while men made $92,500. This leaves women behind by approximately $15,000 per year.
And it’s not just the pay gap that I have to worry about. According to New Republic magazine, women wrote only six of Newsweek’s 49 cover stories in 2009 and its masthead was still 61 percent male in 2010, down only 14 percent since 1970. In addition, New Republic reported that men got 63 percent of the stories among the 10 most widely circulated newspapers in the U.S.
So while there is much talk and legislation proposed to try to ensure that women have equal opportunities and pay, these statistics prove we have a long way to go. In order for true equality in the workplace to exist, one of the first issues that must be tackled is the underlying prejudices that classify women who haggle for advancement or equivalent pay as pushy, as exemplified in the case of Jill Abramson at the New York Times.
Perhaps the focus brought to this disparity by Hollywood will give it the attention needed to finally rectify it. So for the sake of my future as a working woman, I will join Merle Streep in giving my ardent agreement to Patricia Arquette's call to arms for equal pay for women.