She’s blasted E! news for its red carpet sexism and called out the lack of equality in the film industry during her Academy Awards acceptance speech.
Now, Cate Blanchett has targeted the media for their constant line of questioning about how working mothers manage to do it all.
Criticising the stereotypes used to judge mothers, Blanchett called them “complete rubbish” and said there was too much pressure being placed on women.
She believes men don’t face the same level of scrutiny levelled at women and are never asked how they balance work with parenting.
“It’s certainly a question that’s never asked of men. The question is only ever directed towards women” she said during a recent appearance.”How do you balance? How do you have it all?” she said during a press conference according to The Telegraph.
Blanchett is not one to shy away from calling out double standards she sees in public and took the opportunity during the Cannes Film Festival — where she is promoting her movie How to Train Your Dragon 2, in which she voices a mother who has abandoned her heroic son — to declare that Hollywood was doing a terrible job of representing working mothers and express her frustration when asked about her own family life
“When anyone plays a mother on film, there is a whole raft of judgment in that a mother is a particular archetype or that every mother is the same,” she said. “That’s complete rubbish. We did discuss a lot about that particular issue because of course there is a judgment on how women parent.”
She also criticised the constant scrutiny of the media placed on woman’s age or beauty, at the expense of more pertinent issues, and said it still “surprises” her that motherhood and ageing were central to the questions asked of female actors.
“We live in a world where there is still not equal pay for equal work,” she said. “I still don’t understand in 2014 why that is the case. I’m not just talking about the industry in which we work, it’s every industry.
“The things that are being said about women, not just in African countries but in the English-speaking world, I think are absolute appalling and sometimes I think we’re back in the Middle Ages.”
Proving that she could also spin a little humour on the mundane line of questioning, Blanchett responded to a question about whether she lets her three sons play with her Oscar statues.
“Yes, every day. Mummy sits them down and I get my two Oscars out and I let them stroke them for 15 minutes before they go to school, if they’re good,” she responded.
She also used her Cannes appearances to slam the $38 million federal budget cuts to Australia’s film and television funding body, Screen Australia, which she called “short-sighted”.
“I think there’s a lot of concerns in the budget generally, not only the film industry,” she said according to a report on News.com.au.
“It’s not only a potent industry that feeds Australia at home but culture generally, for any nation, is a piece of soft diplomacy.”