In recent years, there have been a number of notable news stories reporting the extent of Hollywood’s gender pay gap, whereby female actors tend to earn considerably less than their male counterparts. These stories generate conflicting intuitions. On the one hand, the unequal remuneration involved looks like a troubling case of gender injustice. On the other hand, there is something odd about the conclusion that these multi-millionaires are victims of distributive injustice: many people believe that the super-rich already have more than they are entitled to. In this project, which is funded by the British Academy, we consider whether these conflicting intuitions can be resolved. More specifically, our research seeks to determine whether the fact that these individuals are so wealthy undermines the moral force of their complaints.
I am working on Justice for Millionaires? with Tom Parr (Politics, Essex) and James Christensen (Politics, Essex)
The research on this project has now been published in the form of an article in Economics & Philosophy. It can be found here.
davidvaxelsen 