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The Businesswoman's Special
Feb. 7th, 2013 06:30 pmWhile I was getting my econ degree, one of the classes I took focused on the pay gap between men and women. It was a pretty cool class that looked not just at pay discrepancies within each industry, but across industries, the differences in payment between traditionally female and traditionally male jobs. It looked at perceptions of how much time women would take off for childcare, and how much time women do take off for childcare, and when, and the ways that moves them off promotion tracks. It looked at systemic problems with informal mentoring given to "guys like me" or places where "start at the lowest rung" means reaching things on high shelves.
The class was very good at explaining what was happening and how it happened. What it was not good at was explaining why it happened, why women were often paid less than the value of their work (or conversely, why men were overpaid). The "why" answer was essentially "you pay women less because you can pay women less." This is tautology, like saying we say hello because people smile and are happy we said hello.
I often think of the "who gets paid" question as it relates to the arts, and specifically the performing arts. Nobody goes into the arts expecting to make a lot of money. (Well, almost nobody.) And it's expected that everyone will do a certain amount of free or underpaid work for various reasons - maybe it's practice, maybe it's advertising, maybe it's a passion project and what they're able to donate is time instead of money.
However, when there is money in live performances, people get paid in order. First you pay the lighting and sound guys. Then you pay the costumer. Then you pay the stage manager. Then you pay the performers. Performers who play musical instruments get paid before anyone who sings.
This always happens, everywhere. When you point it out, people get huffy about it and start throwing out justifications. The performers are "lucky" and should be "grateful for the opportunity." My favorite is when someone tells me the actors and singers don't need to be paid because they get "exposure" and could strike it big. To which I say "hahahaha." But maybe the people I'm talking to get their salaries in lottery tickets, and I'm uninformed about this widespread compensation practice. Meanwhile, the stage crew are doing "boring grunt work" and the lighting and sound guys "are experts who work really hard," and need to be given money.
Now, in my experience, nobody works harder or has more training than the actors. It's much easier to teach somebody to turn on a light board or paint a flat than it is to teach somebody to act. The amount of work on a single show isn't comparable either; the actors may spend 20 hours a week rehearsing for six weeks, while the sound guy may show up 30 minutes before the performance.
The actors are more on the hook, too; not only are they the people the paying audience is coming to see, but a show will get slammed if an actor forgets his lines and just sort of "oh well"ed if the lighting guy forgets a cue - if anyone even notices. The actors are the revenue center of the theater, and in other industries, that's exactly who you pay, regarless of whether the revenue-producing job is fun. Nobody suggests not paying stock traders or landscapers because they like their jobs.
It's even weirder with singers versus "musicians." (In these discussions "the musisians" means "not the singers"). When you're a singer, you never put down your instrument, and your life is circumscribed as a result. You can't get a cold. You can't shout at a sports game or in a crowded party. You can't eat certain foods or drink certain drinks on the day you perform. You have to be extra careful not to lose too much weight or put on too much weight. You have to practice all the time to stay in shape, but can't push too hard without risking you'll lose your voice. And, again, every listener will be critical of you. The guy playing the bass just has to hit most of the notes. The singer has to put style on each of them.
If you spend much time around it, it starts to look like the old "we pay them less because we can." And sure enough, when push comes to shove, the ace in the hole is "we pay crew because otherwise they don't show up." Which is funny, because when unpaid actors run a few minutes late, they're assholes; when an unpaid crew guy doesn't show up, you respect them. You snicker with the crew guys about how the actors who are donating their carefully-built skills and advertising the show and bringing in the audience are prima donnas, even though you yourself would be terrified to step on stage and hate your body and can never remember lines.
It feels just as screwy as "women should clean and take care of children for free, out of love, and feel lucky we let them have a safe place to sleep." We pay the people who have tools and look down on the people who are selling their bodies. It's probably not a coincidence that acting and whoring were conflated for a very long time, or that being able to entertain people through your sweet singing voice and ability to declaim poetry was considered a key part of the education of marriagable young ladies (who of course wouldn't get paid for their entertainment; only purchased whole).
People get really pissed off when you say this. Like, in an abstract conversation with someone who isn't involved in the theater - who doesn't even particularly go to theater - if I say "weird that we don't pay actors even though they're the profit center," there's a chance that person (particularly if straight, white, and male) is going to get red-faced and start yelling at me for being an idiot who doesn't know anything about anything. Which is interesting for me to hear, since I've worked literally every job in a theater and every job on a film set, at every professional level from amateur to equity, and have made an academic study of labor relations, whereas they've [to be determined].
All of which suggests to me that I'm right that this whole thing is screwy and based on emotion and tradition instead of what's ethical or a good business practice. The good news is, we have at least one example of a transition from undercompensation to respect for talent: organized sports.
In the 1800s, baseball players were in the same category as circus performers: suspicious, unsavory bands who traveled from town to town, putting on shows for whatever money they could get. They were banned from a lot of hotels. Even in the early 1960s - when games were on television and in permanent stadiums - most players were not paid much of anything. They worked in the offseason to pay the bills, and were often supported by their wives. Like actors, what they were selling was their bodies, they were expected to perform mostly "for fun" and be grateful they were allowed to play in the majors.
In the late 1960's a man named Marvin Miller came around. He was not a baseball player. He was a labor economist. He started hanging around spring training camps, befriending the baseball players. Then he got them to unionize, and negotiated the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of professional sports. 50 years later, pro sports players are extremely well paid, and rookies in the farm system can make a living while they focus on their training. Meanwhile, revenues are higher than they've ever been; people know they'll see a better quality of game - a truly professional quality of game. And people know to respect the players.
Live theater has its own unions - Stage, Equity. But those unions maybe get it wrong. To qualify for Equity, you have to be cast in a certain number of Equity-endorsed shows, which are in turn pressured to cast only Equity members. Equity is more like an exclusive club than what you usually picture as a union. Usually, you picture a union as including everybody who works in the industry; otherwise, your threatening a strike doesn't really mean anything. If I was running Equity, I'd try to sign up everyone who walked into an audition, until you couldn't put on a show without talking to me first. And what I'd say is: if you can't afford to pay actors even a $10 honorarium, you can't afford to put on your show.
The class was very good at explaining what was happening and how it happened. What it was not good at was explaining why it happened, why women were often paid less than the value of their work (or conversely, why men were overpaid). The "why" answer was essentially "you pay women less because you can pay women less." This is tautology, like saying we say hello because people smile and are happy we said hello.
I often think of the "who gets paid" question as it relates to the arts, and specifically the performing arts. Nobody goes into the arts expecting to make a lot of money. (Well, almost nobody.) And it's expected that everyone will do a certain amount of free or underpaid work for various reasons - maybe it's practice, maybe it's advertising, maybe it's a passion project and what they're able to donate is time instead of money.
However, when there is money in live performances, people get paid in order. First you pay the lighting and sound guys. Then you pay the costumer. Then you pay the stage manager. Then you pay the performers. Performers who play musical instruments get paid before anyone who sings.
This always happens, everywhere. When you point it out, people get huffy about it and start throwing out justifications. The performers are "lucky" and should be "grateful for the opportunity." My favorite is when someone tells me the actors and singers don't need to be paid because they get "exposure" and could strike it big. To which I say "hahahaha." But maybe the people I'm talking to get their salaries in lottery tickets, and I'm uninformed about this widespread compensation practice. Meanwhile, the stage crew are doing "boring grunt work" and the lighting and sound guys "are experts who work really hard," and need to be given money.
Now, in my experience, nobody works harder or has more training than the actors. It's much easier to teach somebody to turn on a light board or paint a flat than it is to teach somebody to act. The amount of work on a single show isn't comparable either; the actors may spend 20 hours a week rehearsing for six weeks, while the sound guy may show up 30 minutes before the performance.
The actors are more on the hook, too; not only are they the people the paying audience is coming to see, but a show will get slammed if an actor forgets his lines and just sort of "oh well"ed if the lighting guy forgets a cue - if anyone even notices. The actors are the revenue center of the theater, and in other industries, that's exactly who you pay, regarless of whether the revenue-producing job is fun. Nobody suggests not paying stock traders or landscapers because they like their jobs.
It's even weirder with singers versus "musicians." (In these discussions "the musisians" means "not the singers"). When you're a singer, you never put down your instrument, and your life is circumscribed as a result. You can't get a cold. You can't shout at a sports game or in a crowded party. You can't eat certain foods or drink certain drinks on the day you perform. You have to be extra careful not to lose too much weight or put on too much weight. You have to practice all the time to stay in shape, but can't push too hard without risking you'll lose your voice. And, again, every listener will be critical of you. The guy playing the bass just has to hit most of the notes. The singer has to put style on each of them.
If you spend much time around it, it starts to look like the old "we pay them less because we can." And sure enough, when push comes to shove, the ace in the hole is "we pay crew because otherwise they don't show up." Which is funny, because when unpaid actors run a few minutes late, they're assholes; when an unpaid crew guy doesn't show up, you respect them. You snicker with the crew guys about how the actors who are donating their carefully-built skills and advertising the show and bringing in the audience are prima donnas, even though you yourself would be terrified to step on stage and hate your body and can never remember lines.
It feels just as screwy as "women should clean and take care of children for free, out of love, and feel lucky we let them have a safe place to sleep." We pay the people who have tools and look down on the people who are selling their bodies. It's probably not a coincidence that acting and whoring were conflated for a very long time, or that being able to entertain people through your sweet singing voice and ability to declaim poetry was considered a key part of the education of marriagable young ladies (who of course wouldn't get paid for their entertainment; only purchased whole).
People get really pissed off when you say this. Like, in an abstract conversation with someone who isn't involved in the theater - who doesn't even particularly go to theater - if I say "weird that we don't pay actors even though they're the profit center," there's a chance that person (particularly if straight, white, and male) is going to get red-faced and start yelling at me for being an idiot who doesn't know anything about anything. Which is interesting for me to hear, since I've worked literally every job in a theater and every job on a film set, at every professional level from amateur to equity, and have made an academic study of labor relations, whereas they've [to be determined].
All of which suggests to me that I'm right that this whole thing is screwy and based on emotion and tradition instead of what's ethical or a good business practice. The good news is, we have at least one example of a transition from undercompensation to respect for talent: organized sports.
In the 1800s, baseball players were in the same category as circus performers: suspicious, unsavory bands who traveled from town to town, putting on shows for whatever money they could get. They were banned from a lot of hotels. Even in the early 1960s - when games were on television and in permanent stadiums - most players were not paid much of anything. They worked in the offseason to pay the bills, and were often supported by their wives. Like actors, what they were selling was their bodies, they were expected to perform mostly "for fun" and be grateful they were allowed to play in the majors.
In the late 1960's a man named Marvin Miller came around. He was not a baseball player. He was a labor economist. He started hanging around spring training camps, befriending the baseball players. Then he got them to unionize, and negotiated the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of professional sports. 50 years later, pro sports players are extremely well paid, and rookies in the farm system can make a living while they focus on their training. Meanwhile, revenues are higher than they've ever been; people know they'll see a better quality of game - a truly professional quality of game. And people know to respect the players.
Live theater has its own unions - Stage, Equity. But those unions maybe get it wrong. To qualify for Equity, you have to be cast in a certain number of Equity-endorsed shows, which are in turn pressured to cast only Equity members. Equity is more like an exclusive club than what you usually picture as a union. Usually, you picture a union as including everybody who works in the industry; otherwise, your threatening a strike doesn't really mean anything. If I was running Equity, I'd try to sign up everyone who walked into an audition, until you couldn't put on a show without talking to me first. And what I'd say is: if you can't afford to pay actors even a $10 honorarium, you can't afford to put on your show.
