Jennifer Lawrence has claimed women impose a gender bias upon themselves in a discussion about achieving equal pay.
Speaking a year after Sony Pictures was hacked and a trove of internal emails were leaked, the Hunger Games actress insisted she was at fault for earning less than her male counterparts - not Sony.
Lawrence did not address the revelation from one embarrassing email that she was being paid less than her male co-stars in American Hustle until writing an essay for Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter about her reluctance to push for equal pay. In it, she described her fear of being considered spoilt or difficult by producers for pushing for more money until learning how much less she received in comparison to "the lucky people with dicks".
The disparity in pay and her subsequent essay ignited a long-running debate on sexism within the film industry and led to Bradley Cooper vowing to work with women in future films when negotiating pay.
“I feel awkward negotiating, I feel uncomfortable asking for more money,” she told CBS host Charlie Rose. “I don’t want to seem like a brat. I don’t want to seem like all these things that are only words that are used for women.”
“I knew what led to that. I knew that there was no-one to blame but myself. I knew it was what I had done with my own mentality.
“As a woman, we almost put this gender bias on ourselves, […] that’s why I wanted to open up and say ‘I feel awkward negotiating. I feel uncomfortable asking for more money.’ I don’t want to seem like I’m being a brat and all these words they have for women that they don’t have for males.
“I spoke out because I knew what led to that. I knew that there was no one to blame but myself."
