Women's Day: Filmmakers hope industry looks past the gender, actors say pay parity still a concern

Veteran cinema star Shabana Azmi said that women characters inhabiting the fiction space have evolved and it is for good.

Mumbai/Jaipur: It's high time the film industry stops categorising filmmakers based on gender and ensures that women are no longer denied pay parity... These are some of the concerns of the directors and actors this International Women's Day.

Shonali Bose, who has directed films such as Margarita With a Straw and The Sky is Pink, says it is irritating to be asked about women's issues as a "woman filmmaker".

"You are always asked, ‘As a woman filmmaker, what do you feel?’ and I’m like, ‘I'm a filmmaker’. Please don't say I'm a female filmmaker. You should not always have to represent your gender. In our cinema, what we would want is to look past the gender... A woman can do anything that men do," Bose told PTI.

Producer Rangita Pritish Nandy, known for creating the web series Four More Shots Please! and Ziddi Girls, agrees.

"We need to pass the gender conversation and just go by skill... Let's look past that and just look at the skill sets of women," Nandy told PTI.

Women characters inhabiting the fiction space have evolved and it is for good, said veteran cinema star Shabana Azmi, known for her powerful performances in her five decade-long career.

"For far too long, women really have been invisible, or they have been shown just to glamourise the place and to be the good-looking girl and all that. Women are much more interesting than that. And I feel that space is definitely opening up and that's always for the good," the actor told PTI.

Pay parity continues to be a concern for many actors like Bollywood stars Madhuri Dixit, Madhoo, and Dia Mirza, who believe that women have to constantly prove themselves when it comes to equal pay.

"... To say that we are equal, and we can draw an audience, but you have to prove it every single time. And yes, there is still a disparity. It's like pushing the envelope every time, a little bit more, it's like baby steps," Dixit said at a session titled The Journey of Women in Cinema ahead of the 2025 IIFA Weekend in Jaipur.

In the 1990s, safety and pay parity for women in the film industry were not even part of the conversation, said Roja star Madhoo.

"There was blind acceptance to how things were, and that was the mindset then. But the fact is that it is not like that anymore; there is a conversation, a fight..."

"The girls today are amazing flag bearers because of whom the conversation has started. Even an older generation (of female actors) has the power to say no. That ‘I’ll not accept this, this is what I want’. The new generation is coming with an open, equal space mindset, which is great," she told PTI.

Two-time Oscar winning producer Guneet Monga, who joined Dixit on the panel at 2025 IIFA in Jaipur, said people need to take more chances on women artists.

"There is clearly a pay gap, there is clearly a difference, and women have to do it 10 times to be doing it once... It's hard, but I want male actors to answer this question. The onus of answering these questions on women is strange because we're the people who are at the receiving (end)" Monga said.

There's still "a lot of work to be done" when it comes to the question of pay parity, added Mirza.

"But I really feel that women in storytelling can really steer the way perceptions are built, and societies are reshaped because it is a powerful instrument of social awareness that can drive some serious action," she told PTI.

Today, women actors are playing diverse roles, added South superstar Jyotika, who has worked with Azmi in the recently released web series "Dabba Cartel".

"We are also making our mark in the bigger male-led films, and I think now there is more prominence, and more stories are being told. That's absolute growth. And of course, we are being cast in all the languages, and we are just moving out from our comfort spaces and everyone's looking towards growth," she told PTI.

There continues to be "sexualisation and objectification" of women on screen, pointed out Mirza.

"As women in cinema, we're constantly kind of trying to rise and go beyond that and seeing we are much more than that. Even though there is a lot of effort and work being done by women and men to change the way we are writing characters for women, we have a long way to go," she added.

Filmmaker Sudhanshu Saria, who has directed films such as "Ulajh" starring Jahnvi Kapoor and "Sanaa" featuring Radhika Madan, said the on-screen representation of women has evolved, but more can be done.

"We must keep mining our understanding of the female experience and commit to portraying it in surprising and authentic ways... We have to stop assigning cliched behaviour patterns to characters simply because they are women.

"Women can be mothers, wives, and girlfriends, but they can also be entrepreneurs, thieves, murderers and psychopaths. We just have to approach characters with respect and curiosity and allow them to be well-drawn and unique," Saria told PTI.

Actor-producer Harman Baweja, who recently backed the critically acclaimed film Mrs starring Sanya Malhotra, said a lot has been done in terms of how women are represented in films, but the road is still quite long.

"We have taken a considerable number of steps, and I'm sure we will continue to evolve, but we also need to evolve our mindsets, which is equally important, if not more," he told PTI.

Bengali cinema star Paoli Dam credits the opening up of streaming space for changing the narrative around women.

"OTT has played an important part in changing the narrative of cinema. In traditional cinema, you will see something which is still misogynistic or larger than life. But OTT, since they're exploring more with the content, the way women are being shown now is unapologetic. They don't need to be guilty to say something, and they can have their standpoint and say no to something," Dam told PTI.