Women are all over the big screen – but pay gap persists in UK cultural sector

It’s been a banner year for women in film, from Margot Robbie’s turn as Barbie to Emma Stone’s Oscar-winning portrayal of Bella Baxter in Poor Things. Even Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s ode to Leonard Bernstein, centred the story on the composer’s wife, Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), as much as it did the man himself.

But according to experts, improved representation on the big screen is not necessarily being reflected in the pay packets of women working in film and television. While Robbie was reportedly paid $50m for Barbie after the film’s record-breaking box office success, one harsh reality remains – female actors are generally making far less money than their male counterparts.

According to figures from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, there now exists a gap of 15.2% within the UK cultural sector, a category that includes work in the performing arts, film and TV, alongside museums, galleries and libraries. This means that for every £1 earned by men working in this sector, women are paid 85p.

“Sadly, these statistics tally with reports Equity has received from our female members, who experience a range of issues that contribute to lower pay overall,” a spokesperson for the UK performing arts union said.

“This includes a lack of rights to maternity leave and pay when working on short-term contracts, inflexible workplaces that do not take caring responsibilities into account, and exclusionary practices at the point of recruitment. In addition, the group Era 50:50, which campaigns for an equal gender balance on screen and stage, reports that men outnumber women two to one in acting roles on our screens.”

It is an issue that was thrown back into the spotlight this week after Kirsten Dunst’s comments about the Hollywood gender pay gap. While promoting her role in the action film Civil War, Dunst reflected that she “didn’t even think to ask” about the difference between her fee and Tobey Maguire’s when they were both cast in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man.

“Even though I had been in Bring It On and he hadn’t … [and] I had more success in my box office than he did,” she said. “I was 17, I was still learning … I didn’t even think to ask. I didn’t even know there was a place to challenge it.”

Dunst is not the first to have raised the issue. The gender pay gap has become a major battleground in Hollywood, from Patricia Arquette using her 2015 Oscars speech to call for “wage equality once and for all”, to other A-listers including Meryl Streep, Charlize Theron and Natalie Portman demanding “equal pay for an equal job”.

Oscar-winner Olivia Colman recently condemned the double standards in the industry. Speaking about her latest film, Wicked Little Letters, Colman said: “I’m very aware that if I was Oliver Colman, I’d be earning a fuck of a lot more than I am. I know of one pay disparity which is a 12,000% difference. Do the maths.”

And the problem, according to researchers, has a trickle-down effect. Hollywood acts as a big cultural influence on not just the rest of the film and TV industry, but on society in general.

Equity said this lack of opportunity “becomes particularly pronounced as women get older”. It urged workplaces to put inclusivity, support and pay transparency “firmly at the heart” of their practices and culture.

Andy Harrower, the chief executive of Directors UK, said embedding fairer hiring practices at the commissioning stage would also help to alleviate shortcomings. “What we do know is that there is unequal hiring [of directors],” he said. “Change has to be wholesale and intersectional, not piecemeal intervention.”

The organisation Parents and Carers in Performing Arts (Pipa) said “the persistent gender pay gap both on and off screen demonstrates how archaic attitudes and inequitable working practices continue to let down women in the industry”.

Research in 2019 revealed that, on average, male Hollywood stars are paid $1.1m more per film than their similarly experienced female co-stars, a figure that increased to $4m for actors over 50. A survey of Hollywood writers also showed women of colour were significantly underpaid.

Among the numerous reports of shocking pay discrepancies is that of Michelle Williams, who was paid less than $1,000 for reshooting scenes in the 2017 film All the Money in the World, while Mark Wahlberg made $1.5m for the same work.

In a 2022 analysis by Business Insider of Hollywood’s 27 biggest all-time paydays, only three women made the list: Sandra Bullock ($70m for Gravity), Cameron Diaz ($42m for Bad Teacher) and Emma Stone ($26m for La La Land).

Though Robbie’s $50m seems impressive, she still tails behind men including Tom Cruise ($100m for Top Gun: Maverick) and Will Smith ($100m for Men in Black 3). Last September, Jennifer Lawrence – who was reportedly paid $5m less than Leonardo DiCaprio for Netflix’s 2021 dystopian film Don’t Look Up – said: “It doesn’t matter how much I do. I’m still not going to get paid as much as that guy, because of my vagina.”

But Anna Smith, the host of the Girls On Film podcast (which has featured 11 female Oscar winners), highlighted some of the progress that has been made. “Things have come a long way since we launched Girls On Film in 2018, the conversation about equality is getting louder and edging further into the mainstream,” she said.

According to Smith, there was “a bit of an awakening” in 2018 in coincidence with Hollywood’s Time’s Up movement, “but we are not [fully] there yet”.

Appearing on the podcast in 2018, the Oscar nominee Andrea Riseborough said things had “changed dramatically”. “Now you can negotiate contracts, and if I’m playing number one and the guy’s playing number two, even though the guy may have got the film financed [due to] his name … I can still get paid as much as him. And that doesn’t sound like it’s a huge leap, but it’s a massive leap.”