Everyone knows that Christina Hendricks is the best part of Mad Men. But the new sketch she’s made with Funny or Die has proven she’s also completely up on her gender politics as well. And willing to spoof herself to make a point.
In case you don’t have time to watch the video (although you should at some point, it’s hilarious), it’s a classic fish-out-of-water scenario that sees Christina’s* Mad Men* character Joan Harris in a modern-day office.
In the clip, she attempts to erase a typo on her computer with a rubber, shakes up a martini at lunch and smokes at the desk. When someone confronts her and asks what the hell she’s doing, she hits them with the money shot saying:
‘In the US, women make 23% less than their male counterparts. Did you know that almost 70% of the minimum wage workforce is female but only 15% of our fortune 500 CEOs are? So I figure if we’re going to run our businesses like its the 60s, I’m going to act like it.’
Adding, deadpan: ‘Or I could have had a stroke. I smoke a lot.’
READ MORE: Britain Among The Worst Offenders For The Gender Pay Gap
The video works because it blatantly highlights in black and white just how backwards it is that the gender pay gap is still so pronounced. And it’s not just in the US. The UK has an equally appalling track record when it comes to gender inequality in the workplace.
Today, it’s been reported that it will take another 60 YEARSuntil women earn the same as men, with women currently earning only 80p for every pound men make. That’s a more conservative estimate than recent figuresfrom Oxfam, which put the number of years at more like 75. And things are changing at a snail’s pace – since 2010, the pay gap has closed at a rate of only 0.3% per year on average, according to the House of Commons library.
Put it this way – the percentage of what women in their 40s earn compared to men has only increased by 5% since the 70s, while the 2014 Cranfield Female FTSEboard report revealed that the number of women on the boards of FTSE 100 companies is still only 20.7%.
So, it looks like Christina is onto something – that the world of work hasn’t really changed much since the 60s and 70s. Still, someone pass us a fag and a martini....
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.