From gender disparity to ageism: Madhuri Dixit, Guneet Monga shed light on journey of women in cinema

Jaipur: Guneet Monga and Madhuri Dixit on Friday shed light on disparity against women in cinema, how far the industry has come and how long it still has to go.

In a women’s day special panel hosted by IIFA as the awards marks its silver jubilee this year, Madhuri Dixit Nene recalled that when she had just begun, there used to be no females on sets apart from the co-actors and hair dressers. Now however, things have started to look different.

Meanwhile, Oscar awardee Guneet Monga opined that even though women are getting roles today, they often get low budget films to work on.

"A very disturbing statistic is that everybody approaches female directors of production(DoP) when they have to make a low budget film, despite females being equally talented, they often get low budget films to work on," she said.

Monga also shed light on the ageism she faced in the industry when she was a young talent. "One thing that I definitely faced was ageism as a 20-year-old. I was 26 when I coloured my hair white, wore saree and prayed for glasses so people take me seriously" Monga told in the panel.

She went on to assert that discrimination is not her problem and that she always pushes boundaries to get her work done despite the fact that "nobody cares about the independent artists". She urged women to understand that there is no point waiting for a seat on the table, as she motivated them to make their own table all together.

Stating how important it is for women to carve their niche, Madhuri Dixit added that today things were not limited to films. One can now influence people on YouTube, Instagram, X. The actress also shared that she has been lucky enough to work in movies that have strong female characters and now when she thought she wanted to narrate certain stories, she became a producer.

"I have that control over what I want to say and how to say it," the actress told.

As the conversation moved on to disparity in the Indian film industry, Guneet Monga said that the onus of making cinema accepting of women should not only lie on women.

"I genuinely want male actors to answer question on disparities because we are also the people on the receiving and then to comment on that?" the actor remarked.