Unequal pay between men and women – aka the gender wage gap – in Los Angeles and all across California has been well-documented for decades… But people are starting to REALLY talk about it just now.
And it’s not a bad thing: better late than never, as they say. First, Hollywood got us talking about sexual harassment in the workplace. And now employers in the U.S. are pressured into figuring out how to tackle gender discrimination and gender wage gap issues.
During the red carpet event at the Golden Globes, 2018 – held earlier this month – several Hollywood actresses have stepped forward in support of a former E! Network co-host Catt Sadler, who exposed the network in an unequal pay dispute.
Turns out, E! might be a little bit hypocritical.
E!, which has long advocated for gender equality in its news coverage and criticized companies that weren’t paying female employees the same as their male counterparts, has been embroiled in an unequal pay scandal of its own.
During the Globes red carpet coverage, actress Debra Messing approached E!’s interviewer Giuliana Rancic to call out the network for wage inequality in support of Sadler.
During the interview, Messing blasted E! for the way it treated Sadler and explained the true meaning of both the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements, the anti-sexual harassment movements that the network seemingly advocated for in its coverage of celebrity news.
“We want diversity, we want intersectional gender parity [and] we want equal pay,” Messing said before calling out the network for its unfair treatment of Sadler, as reported by Huffington Post.
Sadler quit her job as the long-time host of the E! News after discovering that her male co-host, Jason Kennedy, earned significantly more than she did.
The woman quit the show in December and exposed the unequal pay issue in the network, complaining that her counterpart “made close to double my salary for the past several years.”
Unequal pay and gender discrimination have been around for ages, and aren’t fresh issues in entertainment, media and all other industries across California and the nation as a whole, our Los Angeles wage and hour dispute attorneys at the Kaufman Law Firm explain.
Fact: Statistics shows that females working full time in the U.S. earn 80% of what their male counterparts are paid.
When the sexual harassment scandal in Hollywood started gripping headlines in the last quarter of 2017, only a handful of people were actually talking about it as a nation-wide issue that affects not only high-profile female celebrities in entertainment and media, but also all other women in the U.S. employed in ALL industries.
Just because an average American woman doesn’t have the same powerful voice and millions of followers on social media as a movie actress or TV personality, doesn’t mean that she isn’t affected by sexual harassment or unequal pay in her workplace.
Our gender discrimination attorney Matthew A. Kaufman explains that we should be having this conversation for ALL the women in Los Angeles, California and all across our nation.
After all, statistics show that over 75% female employees in the U.S. have been sexually harassed at work at least once. But who is here to listen to all these women struggling from sexual harassment or unequal pay? Apparently, not your employer or HR department.
Our Los Angeles wage and hour dispute attorneys here at the Kaufman Law Firm are here to LISTEN to you and help you take legal action against your employer for gender discrimination stemming from unequal pay and sexual harassment.
Get a consultation today to find out your best legal options. Call our Los Angeles offices at 310-981-3404.