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Admit it or not, gender pay gap exists – even in the most glamourous jobs and even in an industry as popular and hugely successful as Hollywood. Jennifer Lawrence’s essay for a portal has once again brought to fore the ugly truth. While highlighting the pay gap, she also used instances from her life to relate how she felt when she learnt that she's paid less compared to her male counterparts and how she dealt with it. Here are a few excerpts from her essay…
The actress who found how much less she was earning when emails from Sony Pictures were hacked and leaked last year admits that she didn't get mad at Sony but at herself since she felt she had failed as a negotiator and gave up early.
She further adds in her essay, “I would be lying if I didn't say there was an element of wanting to be liked that influenced my decision to close the deal without a real fight. I didn't want to seem 'difficult' or 'spoiled'.
"At the time, that seemed like a fine idea, until I saw the payroll on the Internet and realised every man I was working with definitely didn't worry about being ‘difficult’ or ‘spoiled’.”
Talking about how women are treated in Hollywood and underlining how she time and again finds it difficult to express her opinion, Jennifer explains, “All I hear and see all day are men speaking their opinions, and I give mine in the same exact manner, and you would have thought I had said something offensive.”
Further on how the industry is biased towards the men, she says, “Jeremy Renner, Christian Bale, and Bradley Cooper all fought and succeeded in negotiating powerful deals for themselves. 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.”
Referring to producer Scott Rudin's leaked emailed comments about Angelina Jolie, she confesses, “I would be lying if I didn’t say there was an element of wanting to be liked that influenced my decision to close the deal without a real fight. I didn’t want to seem 'difficult' or 'spoiled,’” and further goes on to explain why women feel the constant pressure to do and say things that do not offend others. “I don’t think I’m the only woman with this issue. Are we socially conditioned to behave this way? ... Could there still be a lingering habit of trying to express our opinions in a certain way that doesn’t 'offend' or 'scare' men?,” she questions.
Somewhere during the essay she also mentioned that she’s still trying to find an 'adorable' way to state her opinion and still be likable. Well, we don’t know if she would be liked by many men out there for spelling things out as they are. But we are sure has definitely got a lot of ‘likes’ from women the world over.
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