Julia Roberts has one of the most illustrious careers in all of Hollywood. 
 
 Roberts, who turns 51 over the weekend, is showing no signs of slowing down in the slightest and why should she? 
 
 In a new interview with the U.K.'s i News, Roberts opens up about gender equality and aging, questioning why people "freak-out" when they hit the half century mark. 
 
 Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 “I think that’s made up, that at a certain age, the bell is going to ring and you are done," she said. "I don’t think anybody buys into that. I don’t think I am special. I’ve always been fortunate that I have found the work I am looking for. I mean, 30 years is a long time – and I am grateful and satisfied.” 
 
 As for equal pay in Hollywood, something that has been a prevalent topic after the #MeToo movement, she's confused as to why acting hasn't caught up to other occupations. Not that most occupations have gender parody. 
 
 “It’s an ongoing thing that we wish was more in the rear-view mirror," she said. "I know the World Surf League announced that they will have equal pay for their female surfers and male surfers. And Manchester United has a female team that started this year. I think there are places where people are really making efforts in the right direction. So if it’s a little bit of time, then we have to take it.” 
 
 The Oscar winner also opened up about her big Amazon debut in the show "Homecoming," out next week. The topic of women behind, as well as in front of the camera, also came up in the conversation. 
 
 “We just do the best we can as individuals. On 'Homecoming,' we had the most incredible, radical team of women on our crew," she said. ||||| Of course, a handful of blokes turned up to "explain" why such a discrepancy would exist in the first place. I’ll save you the time of trawling through the post yourself to discover the truth behind gender pay gaps in multimillion-dollar competition industries: it’s because no-one wants to watch women sports, sponsors get no returns from them, and women in general are rubbish. But it’s not sexism, okay? It’s business! 
 
 Members of the public were quick to call out Billabong for endorsing such blatant inequality. “Does this mean women get to pay half as much for their clothes now?” asked more than a few people. 
 
 The real mystery here is how no-one involved in this competition at any step of the way thought it was at all wrong or even odd to have two competition winners judged so differently despite having performed in the same conditions. Thanking people for bringing "awareness" to something that’s so blindingly obvious just shows how insidious sexism is across many industries. 
 
 “The Ballito Pro maintains its stance as a pro-gender equality competition, which is evident from the ongoing development of the women’s series year-on-year,” they wrote on Facebook. “We are grateful to everyone who brought awareness to this issue and we value all the contribution, comment and participation that has prompted discussions, at the highest level, for a speedy resolution.” 
 
 This week, the ABC also ran a story on a young woman doing a butcher’s apprenticeship. Sarah Wadland’s family have worked as butchers for more than 100 years but she’s the first woman in the generational line to go into the business. 
 
 You’d think that would have been met with enthusiasm, but Wadland says she struggled to find support from both the men in her family and her peers. She had worked as a cashier in her grandfather’s shop, but she was forced to seek an apprenticeship elsewhere because the men in her family didn’t want her to enter the trade. Her peers said she was doing it ‘for attention’, because of course the only reason a girl would want to enter a male-dominated industry would be to somehow make a spectacle of herself. Women currently account for only 6 per cent of Australia’s butchers, and that number can hardly grow higher if invisible barriers continue to prevent their inclusion in the field. 
 
 This is what all too many people don’t understand when they deny the depths to which sexism operates to keep women from succeeding in areas traditionally considered to be the realm of men. Women’s sports are "boring", so we won’t pay them as much. Women should just try harder to do "men’s jobs", but we’ll denigrate their attempts so that they feel unwelcome and unqualified. If women want equality, they should do the hard and dangerous stuff that men do but we’ll make sure to gang up on them until they quit and then say it’s just that they couldn’t hack the pace. 
 
 The impact of sexism on women’s careers is about so much more than legislation and formalised pay grades. By repeatedly sending the message that certain pursuits are masculine and that women trying to involve themselves are just obnoxious interlopers, society enables the continued disadvantage of those not privileged by gender. It’s not good enough for large corporations such as Billabong to need the public to point out these obvious inequalities, nor does it reflect well on the general make-up of those institutions that discrimination like this is seen as so standard that literally no-one thinks to challenge it.
– Julia Roberts just turned 51, and for her it's the biggest shrug—why would anyone care? "I think that’s made up, that at a certain age, the bell is going to ring and you are done," she says, per ABC News. "I don’t think anybody buys into that. I don't think I am special. I've always been fortunate that I have found the work I am looking for. I mean, 30 years is a long time – and I am grateful and satisfied." She also tells iNews that Hollywood's all-too-slow embrace of equal pay is a headscratcher. "It's an ongoing thing that we wish was more in the rear-view mirror," she says. "I know the World Surf League announced that they will have equal pay for their female surfers and male surfers. ... So if it's a little bit of time, then we have to take it." (Marisa Tomei has her own punchy reaction to getting older.)