What Rooney Mara thinks will fix the gender pay gap

Rooney Mara burst onto the scene and blew us away with her tough-as-titanium portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, she’s currently up for an Academy-flipping-Award playing opposite Cate-flipping-Blanchett in Carol, this is a girl who impresses on the regular.

The most recent instance of Rooney coming in and crushing it came in the form of an interview she gave for Deadline Hollywood, the topic of the gender pay gap came up and she pulled no punches when it came to expressing her views:

“Listen, I think that we’re having the wrong conversation (about that topic),” Rooney told Deadline. “The conversation isn’t we’re not getting paid as much as men. The conversation should be why and where does that come from because it’s just a side effect of something much greater, which is that women…there is a certain language that we use or that people use to talk about women and certain types of women in our industry and in lots of different industries, that we would never use to describe men. And I think when you’re getting paid less, there’s sort of this sense that ‘Well you don’t really respect me or feel like you need me as much you need these other people.’”

While we respectfully disagree that talking about the gender pay gap is the “wrong” conversation, we absolutely do agree that this topic is part of a much larger issue, and that we do need to emphasize that the gender wage gap issue is an issue of respect, of showing that you understand someone’s value by compensating them accordingly.

Mara understands that there are those who probably won’t take kindly to her speaking out about these issues (“If you’re a female who is sort of opinionated or has a point of view or is self-possessed in a way, you get described with this language in way that others would never talk about men.”) and that’s why we really appreciate her stepping up and joining the public figures who are talking honestly and openly about the wage gap issue.  

To read the interview in its entirety, head on over to Deadline.