Kristen Bell Tells Businesses To Hire “Pretty, Cheap Labour” In This Great Spoof Of The Pay Gap

After dressing up as Mary Poppins and advocating for an increased minimum wage for Funny or Die a couple of years ago, Kristen Bell is back talking about workers’ rights. Bell features in the first video for Huffington Post’s Celebs Have Issues series, dressed in pink and spruiking an ~innovative~ new hiring practice called “pinksourcing”.

Is your company looking to maximise output while cutting down on costs?” Bell asks. “Why outsource all your production to faraway countries like India, China and Narnia, when we have the cheapest and best workforce right here in the good ol’ US of A? Women.”

I mean… it’s not exactly great to diminish the poor working conditions of exploited people in developing countries, but the parody clip is otherwise sharp and smart.

In the video, Bell jokingly suggests that businesses hire women as a cheap alternative for labour, since white women, black women and Latina women are paid 77 cents, 60 cents and 55 cents on the dollar respectively. She also points out that the women will do a large portion of the “free emotional labour” required in an office (remembering birthdays, bringing baked goods) as well as working overtime for free and being less likely to ask for a raise.

Of course, the video is riffing on a number of real-life circumstances that contribute to women’s generally poorer working conditions: women are often encouraged to do more for less, as well as being socialised not to complain when they are disadvantaged in the workplace.

While US statistics on the gender pay gap tend to differ slightly from Australia’s, many of these issues are a problem here too. The pay gap, for example, is strongly linked to the absence of women on boards and in top leadership positions in business — a fact that was again highlighted by the recent Female-Free Board blacklist, which continues to grow even as we struggle for a target of 30 percent women on boards by 2018.

To be fair, the video is wrong about one thing: recent studies have proven that women do in fact ask for raises (which contradicts the accepted notion that women don’t receive raises because they are encouraged not to ask). But that doesn’t mean those women asking actually get them: women reportedly ask for raises just as much as men but are 25 percent less likely to receive them.

The “pinksourcing” video is the perfect way to poke fun at perennially male-dominated workplaces that are oppressive to women, and should encourage a few people to educate themselves on the gendered issues still at play for working women.

On another note, the video comes at a great time for Bell. She’s just made her debut as the lead in Mike Schur’s (Parks and Recreation) new show The Good Place. The series is already collecting many positive reviews from critics who are praising Bell’s Lucille Ball-style turn as the unscrupulous, wry Eleanor Shellstrop.