New Animation Contract Narrows Gender Pay Gap

variety.com:

Gene Maddaus Senior Media WriterTeri Hendrich Cusumano went into contract negotiations with the major studios with the goal of making major gains for animation color designers.

Such workers choose the color palette for animated films and TV shows, and traditionally they have tended to be women.They have also been paid about $300 per week less than the designers who do characters, backgrounds and props.

While she emphasized the gender disparity in her presentations to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, that argument did not persuade the employers.“The studios do not want to acknowledge they are engaging in gender discrimination,” she said. “They basically just ignore that.”She also provided testimony from animation bosses — art directors and showrunners — about the value that color designers bring to a project.

That argument played better, she said. The AMPTP did not agree to eliminate the pay gap for color designers, but did close it by one third.