Hollywood pay gap will never disappear, Dame Judi claims
DAME JUDI Dench has said the Hollywood pay gap will never disappear, no matter how often stars speak out.
The Oscar-winning actress, 82, believes pay equality is “better now than it’s ever been” but women continued to be “put in our place” when it comes to trying to earn the same as male co-stars.
Her remarks come after a list of best-paid stars over the past year exposed a 42 million US dollars (£32 million) gap between the highest-paid male actor, Mark Wahlberg, and his female counterpart, Emma Stone.
Transformers star Wahlberg topped the male list with 68 million US dollars (£53 million), whereas La La Land’s Stone collected 26 million US dollars (£20 million) in the past year.
Dame Judi said: “It’s better now than it’s ever been, I think, but it will never be on a parity. Never. No matter how much we speak out. We are put in our place.” Meanwhile, the BBC’s director of content has said the broadcaster was aware of its gender pay gap discrepancy and working to close it before the salaries of the top earners were disclosed.
Charlotte Moore said the annual report revelations about the pay of the highest earners, which showed Chris Evans earns four times as much as the highestpaid woman Claudia Winkleman, was only part of the picture.
She told the Edinburgh International Television Festival: “Of course we have got to get better. One of the fantastic repercussions to all of this is [director general] Tony Hall said ‘right, by 2020 we are going to close that gender pay gap’. I think that is a big message.
“That list shows a partial story, it’s a story of the top earners and I think if you looked at some context behind it and people who have come on to the list in the last three years, who have been promoted in terms of the women, you can see there is a change going on.”
The broadcaster came in for fresh criticism on Wednesday as it emerged almost 1,800 staff had a pay rise above 10 per cent last year.