Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Six of the best books on the gender pay gap

Laura Bates is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project.

At the Guardian, she tagged six of the best books on financial inequality, including:
[T]he ugly reality is laid bare in actor Taraji P Henson’s memoir, Around the Way Girl, which details the Empire star’s battle against financial inequality in a Hollywood that privileges white male stars above all others.

Henson describes shocking experiences, from being dropped from a role originally written for her in favour of a white actor seen as a safer financial bet, to being paid a tiny fraction of her male co-star’s fee for a film for which she earned an Oscar nomination. “The math really is pretty simple: there are way more talented black actresses than there are intelligent, meaningful roles for them, and we’re consistently charged with diving for the crumbs of the scraps, lest we starve … I knew the stakes: no matter how talented, no matter how many accolades my prior work had received, if I pushed for more money, I’d be replaced and no one would so much as blink.”
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue