'Sticking It to the Man' is an interesting title for an article about female actors asking for equal pay -- based on credentials, audience draw and awards -- from male-dominated Hollywood. Thanks to Patricia Arquette using her Oscar speech to lobby for equal pay and then Jennifer Lawrence setting a bonfire with her essay indicting a system that paid her 'American Hustle' co-stars more than her.As a consequence of last year's Sony Hack, Lawrence understands just how underpaid she was.

Talking about her essay published in Lenny Letter, Lawrence said her 'hunger Games' character Katniss Everdeen inspired her to take action.

"I don't see how I couldn't be inspired by this character, I mean I was so inspired by her when I read the books, it's the reason I wanted to play her," Lawrence said, a day before the world premiere of "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2" in Berlin.

"So I think it would be impossible to go four years with this character and not be inspired by her."

According to the latest list by Forbes, the 10 highest-paid movie actors in 2015, led by Robert Downey Jr. ($80 million), made $431 million. But the 10 highest-paid movie actresses, led by Lawrence ($52 million), mustered only about half that sum — $218 million. For top stars, TV is somewhat more equitable. Jim Parsons and Kaley Cuoco of “The Big Bang Theory,” along with Sofia Vergara of “Modern Family,” each made in the $28 to $29 million range this year, as the top earners in their field.

Not all movie roles are created equal, and good roles for women are lacking in Hollywood says director Paul Feig. This gender bias is particularly interesting in a town that prides itself on being so liberal and forward thinking.

WIDE APPEAL: Female-led films like the “Hunger Games” franchise, far left, “Pitch Perfect 2,” left, and “Maleficent,” below middle, have minted big box office; Scarlett Johannson’s Black Widow is among the few female characters in megabudget series “The Avengers.”

Many are starting to gripe that there is no economic justification for the pay gap, given the box office successes this year of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” “Spy,” “Trainwreck,” “Cinderella” and “Pitch Perfect 2,” all buoyed by female audiences. “There’s a long held-belief that movies with male stars perform better at the box office,” says Cathy Schulman, the president of Women in Film. “I don’t believe that’s true.”

Variety writes that the pay gap mirrors the larger problem in America where women with full-time jobs make 79 cents for every dollar men are paid. Republicans, in particular, have tried to debate the veracity of this claim, looking at the data differently. But a new study of 1.4 million full-time employees over the course of two years controls for family status, industry, seniority, education and a host of other variables finds that head to head, women are paid 2.7 percent less than men.

Julia Roberts Applauds Gender Pay Talk While Kate Winslet Finds It Vulgar

Julia Roberts loves that Jennifer Lawrence is stirring things up on the topic of pay equality in Hollywood.

“I applaud her,” Roberts told 'Good Morning America'on Wednesday while promoting her latest film, 'Secret in Their Eyes'. “She's a young, fabulous, talented whippersnapper and I love that she's stirring things up.”

Roberts continued, “I mean, she's so energetic and seems to speak her mind, and I think it's great. I think it's great to kind of shake things up. I think it's great to go, ‘Excuse me. Over here.’ I know something now and I'm frustrated by it and why is this?'”

On a separate note, AOC is waiting to see if Roberts endorses Hillary Clinton, a woman she's worked with on numerous campaigns, discussed in our Hillary women channel. Now that both Arctic drilling and Keystone have been announced, it seems that Roberts will endorse Clinton.

Kate Winslet, promoted extensively on AOC for her role in the new Steve Jobs movie, finds the conversation around equal pay vulgar. We imagine that Winslet was horrified then over comedian Kathy Griffin's blunt statements about never receiving equal pay in Hollywood or entertainment media. Griffin made her comments in announcing her Hillary endorsement.

Winslet says she's never been discriminated against by Hollywood. Then again, since she doesn't discuss pay, how does she know.

As a result of a newly energized feminist movement, top actresses have now joined a metaphorical picket line, taking the industry to task for treating women as second-class citizens. Rooney Mara, the star of “Carol” and “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” revealed to the Guardian that she’d sometimes earned half the salary of the men in her films. Amanda Seyfried told the Sunday Times that she learned her pay was much lower — only a 10th of what male actors had pocketed on a recent studio film. Sienna Miller dished to Vogue that even for a Broadway play, a producer tried to get her to settle for less than half the salary of a male lead, which prompted her to bail on the production.

Variety shares a great story from Diane Keaton's memoir 'Then Again' in which the Oscar-winning star of 'Annie Hall' dishes on NOT receiving a back-end deal for the Nancy Meyers' 2003 comedy 'Something's Gotta Give'. Despite having a smaller role, Jack Nicholson did get one and actually sent her a check to try to promote fair parity between them.

This excellent Variety article reaffirms that women's desire to be liked is part of their problem.

Though Lawrence became a global superstar, she didn’t demand compensation similar to that of her male colleagues on “American Hustle” because she was worried about how others would view it. “If I’m honest with myself,” Lawrence wrote in her essay, “I would be lying if I didn’t say there was an element of wanting to be liked that influenced my decision to close the deal without a real fight. I didn’t want to seem ‘difficult’ or ‘spoiled.’ ”