The Hunger Games and a Dior contract helped make Jennifer Lawrence the highest-paid actress in the whole wide world, earning a cool $52 million in a year, the latest list from Forbes states, and yet — bear with us for a minute — we think she deserves even more. Look, it's not like that's chump change, nor is the $35.5 million second-place Scarlett Johansson raked in over the past 12 months, or #3, Melissa McCarthy.
But when you stack up those numbers next to the list of the highest-paid actors in the world, the difference is striking. Forbes writer Natalie Robehmed points out that only four women on the list made over $20 million in a year (#4 is Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, the only non-American), while 21 men hit that mark. The cutoff for the men's list of 34 actors was $13 million, but for the women, they had to make it $6 million to get a list of 18 actresses.
The problem isn't necessarily that women get paid less than men per film (though the Sony hacks showed us that at least in Jennifer Lawrence's case for American Hustle, that was true). It's that there are not enough movies with women in the leading roles. As we learned earlier this year, the number of female-led films has actually been dropping as of late.
Naturally, the fight for equal pay is a little more meaningful when we're talking about the working poor and the middle class (hi, Patricia Arquette!). Still this list is just one of those depressing reminders that everyone's got to push a little harder to get on par with the boys. Also, let's all go buy tickets to some girl movies this weekend, for the cause.
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