Jessica Chastain has been very vocal about the sexism she's experienced in Hollywood. Last month the actress revealed a male director once told her to stop talking so much about "women stuff," and just a few weeks ago she opened up about how journalists kept asking her about "fighting" on the female-heavy set of The Zookeeper's Wife. Chastain is a champion for equal pay as well, and in a new interview for Variety, she explains exactly how she fights for it.
"What I do now when I’m taking on a film, I always ask about the fairness of the pay," Chastain says. "I ask what they’re offering me in comparison to the guy. I don’t care about how much I get paid; I’m in an industry where we’re overcompensated for the work we do. But I don’t want to be on a set where I’m doing the same work as someone else and they’re getting five times what I’m getting."
Chastain continues, "In the past, what I used to do—this is terrible—a movie would come to me with an offer. They wouldn’t want me to do my deal until they cast the male actor. They would wait and see what they had left over, even if they’d come to me first. And so I stopped doing that. Now if someone comes to me and has an offer but wants to wait, I'm like, 'Goodbye.' If you want me in your film, do a favored-nation clause. Don't determine my worth based on what's left over."
Chastain says more women should employ a similar tenacity when negotiating their salaries. "I remember watching Amy Pascal [the film producer who left Sony Pictures after the company's 2014 hack]. It was after the Sony hack, and she was giving a talk somewhere. She said part of the reason women don’t get paid equal to men is they don’t ask for more; actresses need to stop being so grateful. That really hit me. At first, I was really pissed off. And then I thought, She’s touching on something here. Women need to step forward and demand they’re fairly compensated for their work."
Of course, Chastain's message is applicable to all women, regardless of field. It's so important that women recognize their worth and speak up when inequality happens. This is easier said than done, obviously—we're talking about untangling a patriarchal system that has made women afraid to self-advocate for decades. But, hopefully, starting conversations about this issue (like Jessica Chastain is doing right now) will make things easier. Equal pay should be a right.
