This is a rather frank admission of what drives gender bias in Hollywood casting decisions. Its customer preferences – customer discrimination. It was not nasty producers and directors choosing not to hire women.
It was producers and directors casting a movie that might sell at the box office given what the box office wants. The great majority of box office sales is outside of the USA and US cultural values, interests and concepts of humour.
Hollywood is a cutthroat market where producers and directors do do whatever it takes to make their movie sell at the box office. But would not last very long if they indulge their personal preferences at the expense of the box office.
Not every movie has the merchandising potential of action films but they still have to pay careful attention to what audiences want to avoid having produced a run of flops and never get financing again.
That is not made any easier by the first law of Hollywood economics, which is nobody knows nothing. Audiences have a constant demand for novelty but they do not know what they want delay see it.
The overall gender pay gap of 34 per cent for this cohort of full-time workers who were born in 1970. This gap is largely due to the impact of parenthood on earnings – the women earning less and the men earning more after having children.
Mothers in the 1970 Birth Cohort Study who are in full-time work earn 11 per cent less than full-time women without children at age 42. When factors such as education, region and occupational social class are taken into account, this motherhood pay penalty in full-work falls to 7 per cent.
It is difficult for employers to discriminate against women if the gender wage gap is not only driven by motherhood but also by having their first child past the age of 33. Male chauvinistic employers simply do not have the necessary information about whether women are mothers and and whether they had their first child before or after the age of 33.
For employer discrimination to drive the gender wage gap, these male chauvinist employers must know:
whether female applicants are mothers, and
the age of female applicants who are mothers when they had their first child.
This information on the age of first motherhood is essential for employer discrimination to be driving the gender wage gap. This information about the age of first motherhood must be in the hands of the employer so that they do not shortlist and do not promote women who are mothers before age 33.
It would be handy to know why why these male chauvinistic employers have such strong prejudices against women who are mothers before the age of 33 but have few prejudices against women who are mothers after age 33.
Another piece of useful information is how do male chauvinist employers get their hands on the partnership status of mothers when they had their first child. As the Trades Union Congress found
There is a bonus of 12 per cent for being in a couple when women had their first child.
If the gender wage gap is due to employer discrimination rather than the choices by women about motherhood, there seems to be a 12% wage bonus for single mothers who can successfully lie to male chauvinist employers about whether they are in a stable relationship when they had their first child.
Keeping up appearances for the sake of the children has a whole new meaning if there is 12% wage bonus in it if male chauvinist employers can be fooled. There is a wage bonus of several times that if mothers can keep their children secret from their discriminating employer.
When there is a marriage bar in the Australian Public Service, there were instances where women kept their children or marriages secret to avoid being sacked. One woman had four children before she decided to make an honest man of the father. She lost her job.
The overall gender pay gap of 34 per cent for this cohort of full-time workers who were born in 1970. This gap is largely due to the impact of parenthood on earnings – the women earning less and the men earning more after having children.
Mothers in the 1970 Birth Cohort Study who are in full-time work earn 11 per cent less than full-time women without children at age 42. When factors such as education, region and occupation are taken into account, this motherhood pay penalty in full-work falls to 7 per cent.
It is difficult for employers to discriminate against women if the gender wage gap is not only driven by motherhood but also by having their first child past the age of 33. Male chauvinistic employers simply do not have the necessary information about whether women are mothers and and whether they had their first child before or after the age of 33.
For employer discrimination to drive the gender wage gap, rather than women’s choices about balancing career and motherhood, these male chauvinist employers must know:
whether female applicants are mothers, and
the age of female applicants who are mothers when they had their first child.
This information on the age of first motherhood is essential for employer discrimination to be driving the gender wage gap. This information about the age of first motherhood must be in the hands of the employer so that they do not shortlist, do not promote and do not hire women who are mothers before the age of 33.
It would be handy to know why why these male chauvinistic employers have such strong prejudices against women who are mothers before the age of 33 but have no prejudices against women who are mothers after the age of 33. It would
Another piece of you useful information is how do male chauvinist employers get their hands on the partnership status of mothers when they had their first child. As the Trades Union Congress found
There is a bonus of 12 per cent for being in a couple when women had their first child.
Why are the prejudices of male chauvinist employers dampened when the mother is married or in a stable relationship when they had their first child? Why are these male chauvinist employers so prejudiced against in mothers?
There seems to be a 12% wage bonus for single mothers who can successfully lie to male chauvinist employers about whether they are in a stable relationship back when they had the first child.
Keeping up appearances for the sake of the children has a whole new meaning if there is a 12% wage bonus in it if male chauvinist employers can be fooled. There is a wage bonus of several times that if mothers can keep their children secret from their discriminating employer.
When there is a marriage bar in the Australian Public Service, there were instances where women kept their children or marriages secret to avoid being sacked. One woman had four children before she decided to make an honest man of the father. She lost her job.
If women soccer players are discriminated against, their employers must be making a lot of extra profits of their toil. If women soccer players are paid less than their marginal revenue product, the organisers of their tournaments and those that broadcasted them must be doing very well indeed.
The reality is pay in sports these days is determined by revenue from television rights. Players can top that up with sponsorship deals.
Do television commercials for men’s and women’s soccer tournaments sell for the same price? If so, do women receive a smaller percentage of that revenue stream? That is a good test of the hypothesis that they are discriminated against.
Despite the novelty of the US getting into the women’s World Cup, a 30 second commercial was sold for much much less. There may have been a ratings bonanza, but there was no accompanying revenue bonanza that could feed through to the pay of players from more generous television rights for future tournaments.
Women’s soccer is paid less because of the viewing preferences of audiences. Any sport that attracts high ratings will attract generous television rights. The money feeds through to the players.
This is a classic case of customer discrimination. Markets are very good at implementing customer discrimination, in this case giving viewers the sports they want to see.
A classic early example of that was the introduction of foreign and minority players. Part of sport is that could be me out there kicking the goal. In consequence, viewers had a lot of trouble identifying with people who are not like them. Mankiw explains:
Studies of sports teams suggest that racial discrimination is, in fact, common and that much of the blame lies with customers.
One study, published in the Journal of Labor Economics in 1988, examined the salaries of basketball players. It found that black players earned 20 percent less than white players of comparable ability. The study also found that attendance at basketball games was larger for teams with a greater proportion of white players.
One interpretation of these facts is that, at least at the time of the study, customer discrimination made black players less profitable than white players for team owners. In the presence of such customer discrimination, a discriminatory wage gap can persist, even if team owners care only about profit.
That barrier was quickly overcome when viewers discovered that these foreign players and minorities players were very good and helped the team win more. The preference for their team winning overcame the preference for the team winning with people who look like them.
The current successive US women’s soccer should not be overrated in terms of its implications for higher pay. The Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA) was formed in 2000 after success in the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup. It lasted just three seasons before folding with losses of $100 million.
Women’s soccer in the USA did have one year broadcast deals with Fox sport and ESPN in 2014 and 2013. Although no TV deal is set for the 2015 season, the NWSL recently announced that all games will be broadcast on YouTube Live for free.
The women’s sports that are best paid without exception are the women’s sports with the most valuable television rights. Closing the gap between men’s and women’s sport is exclusively in the hands of viewer.
The sponsors of women’s sports are not hiding bags of money out the back which they could have paid for women out of secret television deals worth as the same as for men’s sports.
This visiting American education professor who specialises in globalisation, claimed in the linked radio interview that real wages had fallen in the USA and Mexico. Even for the bottom 20% of the USA, their after-tax household incomes increased by 40% since 1979, with most of that after the signing of NAFTA.
Women’s earnings growth has been perfectly fine over the last 40 years despite the horrors of NAFTA and the attack on unions and workers rights by a top 1% emboldened by NAFTA and globalisation, if our visiting academic is to be believed.
Gender analysis, gender analysis, where is his gender analysis of NAFTA? Few labour market statistics make sense without being broken down by sex because of the immense economic progress of women in the last 50 years. Can NAFTA claim credit for that?
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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