Kajol on pay parity
Kajol made a comeback in Bollywood with her thrilling suspense movie The Trial: Pyaar, Kanoon, Dhokha. Recently, she opened up about the problem of lack of pay parity in India. For the unversed, pay parity is when two people on the same role are offered the exact same package regardless of their gender, nationality or other grounds of identity. Kajol expresses that just like men-led movies receive massive success, women-led movies also need to reach the same benchmark to bring a successful change in the entertainment industry of India.
She said, “India is progressing…They watch a lot of different types of cinema thanks to social media and OTT. We are thinking better and hoping for better. When you start making a Wonder Woman for India and it does equally well as a Pathaan, then maybe there will be pay equality.”
It’s noteworthy that women have been oppressed for several generations. To an outsider, B-Town may look like the perfect destination for women to get what they deserve, unlike the rest of the world, but it’s the bitter truth that cinema, although relatively more progressive than the remainder, is still in a patriarchal country like India where till this day, women are given less than what they deserve. Other than Kajol, the world famous Priyanka Chopra, when asked why she switched to Hollywood, disclosed the dark secret of B-Town. In the entire shelf life of her career as a Bollywood actress, she never received the same pay cheque as her male co-actor despite the roles and hard work being the same. It was Hollywood when she received the first equal pay of her life.
The upsetting part of Indian cinema is, when a co-actress is paid more than the co-actor, it makes the headlines, the exclusive, ‘breaking news’, but when she’s paid less while she stands right beside the male in the movie, there’s no discussion about it. By speaking about pay parity on a national platform, actresses like Kajol are doing their bit to end the cycle.
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