Women in Bollywood have often spoken about the pay parity issue. Shedding light on the same, Raveena Tandon during an exclusive conversation with NewsX at ‘We Women Want Festival & Awards 2024,’ spilled the beans on how pay parity is still a big issue in the industry and actresses still have a long way to go.
Raveena Tandon, for the unversed, was honoured at ‘We Women Want Festival & Awards 2024′ in recognition of her excellence in bravery. Here is an excerpt from her interview:
“Still Run By Men, To Speak Very Bluntly”
In a conversation with Uday Pratap Singh, Editor, NewsX, Raveena Tandon chose to go all in when asked if she has seen the parity increase for the actresses since she has been part of the industry for many years. “I have definitely seen the parity in as far as the roles are concerned,” said the Bollywood star adding, “especially I think there’s a lot of inclusivity of women in the space.”
Raveena continued, “In our profession today, whether like you’d say OTT or you would say films or you would say even television, it is also being helmed by a lot of women and that is the good thing. The inclusivity as far as the pay parity I think that is still run by the men so to speak very bluntly. Honestly, to a certain extent,yes, there are movies that are made wholly and solely with probably Taapsee (Pannu) helming the film or me helming the film. It could be a Patna Shukla or it could be Haseen Dillruba, it could be anything at that time probably.”
Raveena Tandon further told NewsX, “Yes, and the hero with us probably, then we would be at par with them because the film centers around us. The 49-year-old also added that things change the minute when it comes to a hero centric film especially when it comes to A-grade heroes.
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“You Should Be Standing By Me For Pay Parity”
Raveena Tandon at the NewsX event also recalled an incident of pay parity when a female producer declined to pay her the same amount of money because the latter had to take care of the hero’s expenses.
“It recently happened with me you know where the producer is actually a woman and I’m explaining to her, I said, ‘Listen, dude you should be standing by me for pay parity because this is how we women need to support women.'” Raveena shared how the producer told her they had to pay the hero and he came by private chartered aircraft.
“I was like great so why do you have to cut that from my money so you know there are things which still amuses me to a certain extent and that’s where I find the difference,” stated Raveena adding, “This is my third or fourth Innings I don’t know how long I’ll play my innings. We are lucky to be doing films the kind of films that we being offered and that’s when I think we get to put our foot down and say listen this is how it’s going to be but I think for pay parity there’s still a little bit we still have a long way to go you know.”
At the ‘We Women Want Festival & Awards 2024’ event, Raveena Tandon also shared how her movies like Shool and Satta proved to be a gamechanger for her. “Besides the glamorous songs, I think people started accepting me more in realistic cinema as well and the thing became ‘she can act too’ concluding,” thoda bahut actor ka bhi label mil gaya humein ussey.”
Watch Raveena Tandon’s Full Session From ‘We Women Want Festival & Awards 2024’ Here:
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