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Your support makes all the difference.Love Island contestant Amber Davies has claimed that she has experienced the gender pay gap, as fellow winner Kem Cetinay was “paid quite a bit more” than her for the same work.
In a clip from upcoming documentary Still Working 9 to 5, the 23-year-old actress, who won the reality series in 2017, revealed that she had been paid less than her ex-boyfriend when booked for the same jobs following the show.
“I have experienced the pay gap,” she said. “When I won Love Island, the guy I won it with and I would do jobs together and he would get paid quite a bit more than me for the same jobs.
“So then I stuck up for myself and I was like ‘You know, actually, I’m not going to do the job, you can do it by yourself.’ So yeah, I stick up for myself.”
Still Working 9 to 5 will reunite Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, who starred in the original 9 to 5 film released in 1980, to talk about what still needs to be done 40 years later in the fight for gender equality.
The iconic comedy focused around three working women who plotted to overthrow their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” of a boss.
Davies played Violet Newstead, Lily Tomlin’s role in the film, in the original West End cast of 9 to 5 the musical.
She says: “Violet says a line in the show, where she says ‘I bet in 10 years’ time this won’t be an issue’.
“And that’s the whole point, it still is an issue. The pay gap, still daycare and things like that for people’s children.
“Though we have made a difference and it is changing for the better, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.”
The documentary’s artistic director, Gaylene Gould, said: “The idea of thinking about feminism and feminist ideas… how do we make them translate and reach a broader set of people than would normally understand these conversations?
“I think the joy of 9 to 5 is it helped very serious ideas reach a broader, really wide audience who probably wouldn’t be interested in those concerns.”
The gender pay gap is the average difference between hourly wages for men and women. In December 2018, the World Economic Forum reported that it will take 202 years to close the gap.
The coronavirus pandemic also risks widening the gap further, according to anti-poverty campaigners, as women are disproportionately affected by businesses shutting under lockdown.
Women are losing an estimated £60 more than men a month during lockdown, claims charity Turn2us.
Still Working 9 to 5 will premiere in 2020 with the date to be confirmed once guidelines on film festivals are clearer following the coronavirus pandemic.
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