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A speech that Viola Davis gave back in 2018 is going viral. The passionate speech was given during an interview with Tina Brown at a Women of the World event in 2018. Davis speaks on the pay gap between black and white women and how her achievements are the exact same as A-list actresses like Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver and still she makes less than them. “I got the Oscar, I got the Emmy, I got the two Tonys, I’ve done Broadway, I’ve done off-Broadway, I’ve done TV, I’ve done film, I’ve done all of it. I have a career that’s probably comparable to Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Sigourney Weaver. They all came out of Yale, they came out of Julliard, they came out of NYU. They had the same path as me, and yet I am nowhere near them, not as far as money, not as far as job opportunities, nowhere close to it,” said Davis. Davis says she’s been called, “the black Meryl Streep” but wonders why she doesn’t get paid like Meryl Streep. A report from the National Women’s Law Center cited that Black women would have to work a full year and a half to make as much as white men do in a single year. This report says black women would make $946,120 less than white men in a 40-year career, besides raising the pay wage for black women. What other ways do you think the pay gap could be closed?
