Catt Sadler’s resignation from E! News last year took the entertainment world by storm. And the journalist wants to make one thing clear. “It was not quitting,” Sadler told Cheddar’s Baker Machado in an interview Monday. “I was holding up my end of the bargain, and they were not, so my hand was forced.” Her departure, driven by a “massive pay disparity” between her and her co-anchor Jason Kennedy, came right at the moment the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements were culminating in nationwide rallying cries. Celebrities from Jennifer Lawrence to Eva Longoria all threw their support behind Sadler, something that, at first, took the host by surprise. “That just reaffirmed that this is a real issue,” she said. “It isn’t just my story, it isn’t one story. It’s so many women’s story. So my name, my story is just kind of a symbol of what’s really going on.” Today, Sadler is turning her own fight for pay parity into a learning experience for women everywhere. As of 2017, white women earned 80 percent of what men earned. Those numbers are worse for black and Latina women, who earn 63 and 54 percent of what men do respectively. The key to closing that gap, according to Sadler, is having more open conversations about the issue and equipping women with the tools to navigate things like wage negotiation. “It’s baby steps,” she said. “But...the collective voices, I think, are actually contributing to a real shift.” This year, Equal Pay Day, measured by how many more days women have to work in order to earn the same as men, falls on April 10th. For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/catt-sadler-is-on-a-mission-for-pay-equality).
