Bollywood actress Dia Mirza has never been one to shy away from speaking her mind. Recently the actress spoke about the pay disparity in Bollywood to a leading agency. "It is about time that women in industry address gender disparity. Until the industry matures in its understanding that we need to treat women equally, not much can change. It is a combination of two things. One is that women need to start asserting their rights and also it has to be narrated. Gender pay disparity exists largely also because films are usually headlined by men," she said.
"Salaries are fixed based on the popularity of the stars... A film shouldn't have to be a female dominated film or male-dominated. They should give equal opportunity to women. The balance is cued in not just the way we function but also in the way we tell stories. Things will improve when we start witnessing that balance in the stories we tell, in the choices we make and in the way we assert ourselves," she added.
"I agree that more films these days have strong female characters but we need many, many more. Also if you think about the representation of women in the industry in the technical side -- directors, writers, cinematographers, sound recorders, editors etc. --, even that ratio is skewed. So we need more women storytellers to bring balance to that skewed equation. I joined the industry at a time the shift we see today didn't even exist. I remember once when I refused a film I was asked, 'Why did you refuse the film? It has a superstar in it and you have four songs, so why are you saying no?' The point is that the idea of what women contributed to a film was very different from what it is becoming now, especially in the commercial cinema," she concluded.
