British actress Olivia Colman known for her role as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown and Sonya Falsworth in Secret Invasion implied studios are prejudices by claiming she would get paid more if she were a male.
Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown (2019), Netflix
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Colman said, “Don’t get me started on the pay disparity, but male actors get paid more because they used to say they drew in the audiences.”
She continued, “And actually, that hasn’t been true for decades but they still like to use that as a reason to not pay women as much as their male counterparts.”
Olivia Colman as Special Agent Sonya Falsworth in Marvel Studios‘ Secret Invasion, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©? I mean, you’re an Oscar winning actress, Olivia.”
The actress replied, ““I’m very aware that if I was Oliver Colman, I’d be earning a f*** of a lot more than I am. Absolutely, yes. I know of one pay disparity, which is a 12,000 percent difference.”
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Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown (2019), Netflix
The gender pay gap is an often repeated talking point that persists despite a lack of evidence. Economist Thomas Sowell addressed the idea of a gender pay gap in 2016 writing in National Review, “Women as a group do get paid less than men as a group. But not for doing the same work. Women average fewer annual hours of work than men. They work continuously for fewer years than men, since only women get pregnant, and most women are not prepared to instantly dump the baby on somebody else to raise.”
He added, “Being a mother is not an incidental sideline, and being a single mother can be a major restriction on how much time can be put into a job, either in a year or over the years.”
Olivia Colman as Special Agent Sonya Falsworth in Marvel Studios’ SECRET INVASION, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Gareth Gatrell. © 2023 MARVEL.
Sowell would then address comments Hillary Clinton was making on the campaign trail at the time that are similar to Colman’s. He wrote, “People like Hillary Clinton can simply grab a statistic about male–female income differences and run with it, since her purpose is not truth but votes. The real question, however, is whether, or to what extent, those income differences are due to employers paying women and men different wages for doing the very same jobs, for the very same amount of time.”
He then asserted, “We do not need to guess about such things. Many studies have been done over many years — and they repeatedly show that women and men who work the very same hours in the very same jobs at the very same levels of skill and experience do not have the pay gaps that people like Hillary Clinton loudly denounce.”
Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown (2019), Netflix
Notably, Sowell called out interviews such as Colman’s as well, “People who are looking for grievances are not going to be stopped by facts, especially if they are in politics. But where are our media pundits and our academic scholars? Mostly silent, either out of fear of being denounced as anti-women or because they have chosen to take sides rather than convey facts.”
He added, “Nevertheless, there are enough scholars, including women economists, who have done enough honest studies over the years that there is no excuse for continuing to repeat a discredited lie, based on comparing apples and oranges. A book written by two women and titled Women’s Figures shows the results when you compare women and men with comparable qualifications.”
Olivia Colman as Special Agent Sonya Falsworth in Marvel Studios’ SECRET INVASION, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Gareth Gatrell. © 2023 MARVEL.
What do you make of Colman’s claims?
