The Wage Gap In Canada Is Real And Here's Why It's Bullshit

Forbes recently released a list on the highest paid actors and actress in Hollywood for 2016. While there was no surprise that there was a difference in pay between the genders, the gap from male to female actors was actually insulting. Mark Wahlberg, the highest paid male actor earned $42 million dollars MORE than Emma Stone, the highest paid female actor in Hollywood. Even worse, the top 13 men on the list all earned more than Emma Stone, between June 2016 and June 2017. 

To put this into perspective, La La Land (Emma Stone's feature film) grossed $445.3 million dollar USD in the box offices, collected 110 awards, scored a 92% rating on rotten tomatoes, AND she won an Oscar for best actress in 2016. Her co-star Ryan Gosling also took a pay cut to ensure that she was fairly paid for her time and work on the film. 

Mark Wahlberg's starred in Transformers: The Last Knight and Daddy's Home 2. His latest Transformer film scored a 15% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was the lowest grossing film of the franchise to date. So while it did earn $598.3 million USD worldwide, the high production costs made it so that this film wasn't actually a box office banger. 

It doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that the stats just don't add up but it's just another example of how the gender wage gap is hugely unfair. 

And according to Canadian Women's Foundation, this isn't just an issue that Hollywood actresses or Americans in general are facing, it's a problem woman right here in Canada are also struggling with. Out of 34 developed countries, Canada had the 7^th highest gender wage gap in 2014.

In a study done in 2017 by Statistics Canada, the pay gap exists in every province and in almost every major occupational group. Also, the gap in annual pay between men and women has barely moved in the past 20 years, even though more women are going on to get higher levels of education and, for the most part, women's level of education have surpassed those of men.

For most women working full time in Canada the difference in pay is 87.9 cents for every dollar that men make in the country. Which might not sound like much but when you calculate it on every dollar you make over your entire career, you soon realize that it creates a massive loss of income. 

There are arguments as to why this gap exists (men do more dangerous jobs, work longer hours, take less time off, etc), but most cases show that men and women working in the same role, with the same level of experience, and clocking the same amount of hours will still have a wage gap. NOW THAT'S TOTAL BULLSHIT. 

There's a lot more to the issue here than just a gap in pay, it's a lack of opportunities for women in the job force, essential services to things like childcare being unaffordable, and a variety of other issues.

So when Forbes reports that one female actor made a couple million less than her male counterpart we really shouldn't just roll our eyes and make fun of their 'celebrity problems' we need to stop and see the bigger picture of gender discrimination here. 

Source: Stats Canada