Young Mollywood actor Rima Kallingal has been drawing flak of late for her belligerent stand against gender discrimination and sexism prevalent in society today and the Malayalam film industry in particular.
A video from TedX talk that was organized in last October, wherein the actor narrated disturbing instances of gender discrimination from her personal and professional life has set off a deluge of debates favoring and opposing the views of the actor.
Taking a firm and courageous stand Kallingal said, “I belong to an industry where women are paid one third of their male counterparts. We are told that we have absolutely no value when it comes to satellite rights and box-office collections,” she said.
Rima said that the attack on her colleague in February 2017 is a turning point that provoked her to raise her voice against the system. “In this industry, women hear words like shelf life, dumb down, adjust, compromise and 'smile more.' How long do we dumb down, how long do we remain silent and what does it take to break this silence?” Rima asked the listeners.
She said that her journey of questioning the system began right when she was a child. She said that her mother made it a point that the eldest person at our dining table and the two men were served the fish fries.
While as a 12-year-old she sat there weeping for a piece of fish fry. “It was then I started questioning the system that nurtured gender discrimination at all levels,” she said.
Rima said that the actress who suffered the sexual assault on February 17 last year broke all conventions and stereotypes that are associated with woman. That is the reason why women hailing from different spheres of movie industry came forward with Women in Cinema Collective (WCC.)
The actor added that there are around three-hundred female artists working in the Malayalam movie industry just to work with the ten leading male artists. Quoting the Supreme court's Vishakha guidelines aimed at avoiding instances of sexual harassment at workplaces, Rima opined that women are so much objectified in the shooting locations that one might wonder why wouldn't one purchase some furniture instead of hiring a female artist.
“We all have at least one woman in our life who has completely influenced our being, our existence. Why is it that it is not reflected in the most popular art form of this century?” she asked.