Dakota Fanning is on the brink of graduating from New York University, and the 22-year-old women's studies major sat down with Elle Canada to talk not just about her acting career, but also about the gender wage gap in the entertainment industry.
"It’s frustrating that you still have to talk about it," Dakota [said] (http://www.ellecanada.com/culture/celebrity/article/exclusive-dakota-fanning-isn-t-planning-on-cracking-anytime-soon). "As part of my school, I’ve studied lots of different periods, and if you go back to, like, The Taming of the Shrew, it’s talking about the disparity between genders, and it’s crazy that we still haven’t cracked that."
In fact, the wage gap is such a big problem in Hollywood that the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California began investigating what it has described as "blatant and extreme gender inequality" throughout the entertainment industry.
But pay discrimination isn't only an issue for actresses like Dakota Fanning and Jennifer Lawrence, who spoke out after making less than her male costars in American Hustle.
White women still make 78 cents to their male counterparts, and there is an even bigger gap between black and Latina women and white males. Even among college educated women and men, a new study from the Center for American Progress found that the gender pay gap starts almost as soon as you graduate.
We're glad that Dakota is talking about how frustrating this is, and hope she keeps working on this serious issue after she graduates.
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