Demand for Pay Transparency Among Hollywood Creatives

Many organizations have expressed support for pay equity. Yet, few organizations have internally analyzed pay differences and even fewer have shared pay information with their employees. Even employee-lead organizations who have collected these data for several decades have faced barriers in making them accessible to their members. One explanation for the mismatch between publicly expressed sentiment and private action is a conflict between the privately held opinions of the minority in decision making positions and the majority of employees. We test this hypothesis in an industry that made the headlines for its unequal pay practices: Hollywood. Specifically, we survey the members of the Hollywood Guilds, employee-lead organizations with a publicly stated goal of achieving pay equity. 98% of screenwriters recently voted in favor of a contract stating a goal to "enact measures to combat discrimination and harassment and to promote pay equity" (WGA, 2023). We use a survey experiment to elicit demand for the collection and release of pay data. We ask guild members about their actual pay, and their beliefs about where their own pay falls relative to others' pay. We then describe the type of pay reports we could produce and ask them to state their support or opposition for making such reports publicly available.