Kristen Bell’s special skills include not only singing, dancing, and delivering wry one-liners, but also taking on wage inequality in pithy comedy videos. Two years ago she dressed up as Mary Poppins to push for an increased minimum wage. And now she’s back to take on the gender wage gap, too. The satirical video is part of The Huffington Post’s “Celebs Have Issues” series, wherein famous people draw attention to the causes they care about. Here Bell plays pitchwoman for the concept of “Pinksourcing,” i.e., hiring women in your office because they’re both cheaper and more likely to do free emotional labor.
The latter idea is especially interesting as discussions of the gender wage gap tend to focus mostly on the fact that white women make about 77 cents for every dollar a man makes (60 cents if you’re a black woman, 55 cents if you’re Latina). But Bell’s “Pinksourcing” video also points out other “benefits” of hiring women: They tend to be socialized not to complain about shitty working conditions and they’re less likely to ask for raises. Plus they’ll do the “office housework,” like remembering birthdays and taking lunch orders. And since the U.S. is dead last among developed countries when it comes to paid maternity leave, you don’t need to pay them while they go about that whole bringing-life-into-the-world thing.
Given how much those factors—especially maternity leave and childcare—tie into the gender wage gap in the first place, Bell actually manages to cram quite a bit of nuance into a two-minute-long comedy video.