Opinion: When the pay gap decimates the wages of even a top Hollywood star

Editor’s Note: Sophia A. Nelson is a journalist and author of the book, “Black Woman Redefined: Dispelling Myths and Discovering Fulfillment in the Age of Michelle Obama.” The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.

I was a senior in high school when “The Color Purple” first opened in theaters in 1985. Nearly four decades later, it remains one of my favorite movies. I also had the pleasure of seeing the new musical version of the film, based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which opened this week to strong box office numbers. It was the biggest Christmas Day opening since 2009, and the second biggest ever.

The all-star cast features Academy Award-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson in the role of Shug Avery, the irrepressible jazz singer with an indomitable spirit. But in a recent event with Gayle King and members of the movie’s cast, Henson broke down in tears as she described her anguish over being underpaid during a decades-long career as a Black actor in Hollywood. She said the pay disparity even led her to consider quitting acting.

Henson’s heartfelt cry resonated with other Black actors, and it echoes remarks that others have made over the years. Viola Davis, one of Hollywood’s most accomplished actresses with a rare EGOT to her credit, made headlines with her complaint in 2018 that actresses of color earned “maybe about a tenth” of what White actresses in the industry are paid.

Her remarks also struck a chord with me, a Black woman who does not work in Hollywood, but who knows firsthand that the racial pay gap continues to run far, wide and deep. That’s also what the data shows: A recent study by the American Association of University Women titled, Black Women and the Pay Gap, found that on average, Black women were paid 64% of what non-Hispanic White men earned in 2021. Latinas and Native women also face substantially wider pay gaps due to the compounded effects of racism and sexism, according to the study.

I know about pay disparity not just from the research however, but from my lived experience. It’s why I left the legal profession in 2008 and never looked back. Going out on my own as a consultant was hard, but being my own boss allowed me to focus on my work rather than having to navigate enervating office politics and microaggressions around race and gender.

Whether I was working in public service or at a fancy private law firm, my pay was always less, even when my experience or credentials were superior. And whenever there was a push for transparency in pay by women or minorities, the men who run these institutions would push back even harder.

True story: I lost a job once early in my career because I found out about gross pay disparities between me as an attorney, and a college dropout White male, and another with just a bachelor’s degree. When I asked my then male boss for a raise based on my work and credentials, I was dismissed a week later. You get labeled “difficult” if you refuse to just shut up and gratefully accept whatever they throw at you.

That is why Henson’s anguish over this issue is spot-on — it captures what being underpaid does to Black women’s emotional well-being. It’s akin to the harm we suffer when doing the hard work of getting an education confronting similarly difficult odds. Or when we win awards for our work but still are not deemed good enough to be compensated on par with what White colleagues are paid.

So what is the way forward? I think it starts with high-profile Black women like Henson calling out this disparity loudly and clearly: “I’m just tired of working so hard, being gracious at what I do, getting paid a fraction of the cost,” Henson told Gayle King on SiriusXM. “I’m tired of hearing my sisters say the same thing over and over. You get tired. I hear people go, ‘You work a lot.’ Well, I have to. The math ain’t mathin’.” (“The Color Purple” was distributed by Warner Bros., which, like CNN, is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.)

Beyond this, I wish that more high-profile White women actors, attorneys, corporate executives and academics would stand in solidarity with their Black and brown sisters as they ascend the ladder of financial and career success. It’s called intersectionality and allyship.

People who have that kind of power could use it to make a real difference. Sheryl Sandberg penned the global bestseller, “Lean In,” urging women to take the initiative and step up, advice that had little to say to women of color confronting greater obstacles in Corporate America, but she’s just one case in point. Of course, it is not just on White women to address the disparity; White men and men of color must see it and work to fix it too.

White corporate leaders appear not to see us. And in large part, that’s because we’re underrepresented there — so it becomes something of a vicious circle. In the Fortune 500 right now, just 10% of CEOs are women. Just two are Black women.

Black women are not in prestigious jobs at the top of the corporate ladder earning massive salaries — and the pay gap leads to a wealth gap. According to the Urban Institute, Black women face a 90% wealth gap, and the earnings gap drives two-thirds of this divide. The think tank says that Black women lose more than $900,000 over a 40-year career because of this earnings gap.

Being paid less makes it harder for Black women to break free from generational poverty, and that can lead to lack of educational opportunity, challenges in attaining the dream of home ownership and a plummeting sense of self-esteem.

And all of that, in turn, can feed a gathering sense of despair, whether you’re a blue-collar mom struggling to put food on the table or a Hollywood star like Taraji Henson, who is absolutely right that at this point in her career — like many of us who have been under-compensated for years — she should be paid her worth.

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