Rock icon Stevie Nicks believes the fight against sexual misconduct and gender inequality in the entertainment industry’s is going to require persistence.
“Everybody needs to not let this be a kind of big wave and just go away and say, ‘Oh well, you know, it’s over and nobody cares anymore,'” Nicks told CNN the Recording Academy’s MusiCares event on Friday. “Everybody has to keep really fighting because otherwise women, we will be swept under the carpet yet again and it will just start over.”
Nicks and the other members of Fleetwood Mac were honored at the pre-Grammy charity event.
The singer, who joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, said she and fellow bandmate, Christine McVie, did not experience much sexual harassment over the course of their meteoric careers.
“I think I’ve been very lucky,” she said. “And maybe it’s because when I joined Fleetwood Mac, Christine and I made a pact. We said we will never ever be treated like a second class citizen amongst our peers as we get more famous and more famous — and if we’re in a room with famous rock n’ roll stars that are men and they treat us that way, we will scream at them and then we’ll walk out.”
“We’ve been a force of nature our entire career, so nobody has dared to step over that line to Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks,” she continued. “I’m such a raging monster when I’m angry that it would have never worked, so I’m really glad I never had to run into that.”
As for the ongoing conversations about pay disparities between men and women in entertainment and across industries, Nicks said she’s in full support of those calling for pay equity.
“Fleetwood Mac has two women and we all get paid the same,” She said. “And if we didn’t, Christine and I would be walking out the door.”
