Gemma Arterton Says “There Is So Much More To Do” In #MeToo Campaign – BAFTA Awards
The stars have started arriving at the BAFTA Film Awards with many A-list actors bringing activists along with them, including Gemma Arterton, who walked down the red carpet with two of the women who inspired Made In Dagenham.
Arterton brought Eileen Pullen and Gwen Davis, who staged a three week walk-out from Ford’s Dagenham plant in 1968 to campaign for equal pay. The Their Finest star said it was a “complete honor” to meet the women, who have “done all women proud.”
Arterton was one of the actors who signed up to launch the UK Justice and Equality Fund this morning, to provide a network of advice, support and advocacy organizations across the UK. On the red carpet, she said, “I think an incredible amount of work has been done in an incredibly short space of time. There’s a real appetite for change and I think this is the moment. There’s so much more to do. Over half of women in the UK have suffered sexual abuse so that’s something that needs changing, which is why we set up the fund to help anyone who has been sexually abused in the workplace and that’s a way we can keep moving this forward and move it further than just the entertainment.”
Pullen added, “We thought it would have ended by now and everybody would have got their rights,” while Davies added Arterton “has done us proud”.
Meanwhile, The Death of Stalin and Battle of the Sexes star Andrea Riseborough, who is currently starring in TV series Waco, walked down the red carpet with Time’s Up activist Phyll Opoku-Gyimah and stars including Naomie Harris, Gemma Chan and the US activist and actress Tessa Thompson expected to be joined by other activists.
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