Hema Committee report: Kerala must provide women with a safe and equitable workspace
Justice K Hema Committee report, a poignant section stands out. Narrating her experience, a junior artist describes incidents of male actors harassing her. Apart from the acting parts, she lost out when she rejected sexual propositioning. She also mentions how she worked on a script for the big screen, pouring her heart into it every night after a long day's work. When she is told that this, too, would happen only if she was willing to 'adjust' and 'compromise' — the despicable industry bro code for demands for sex — she gives up on her dream.
The 3-member Hema Committee was set up by the Kerala government in 2017 to 'study and report' issues faced by women in cinema, following persistent efforts of the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) after the sexual assault of a prominent female actor. After the report's court-ordered release recently, the Malayalam film industry is caught in an unprecedented churn.
Multiple women have drawn courage from the report's release to publicly share their accounts about the sexual harassment. Some FIRs have been filed, and an SIT has been set up. But how will we measure the number of careers cut short and dreams turned to dust by men controlling the industry — whether opportunities denied to an award-winning actor like Parvathy Thiruvothu or a makeup artist?
The 235-page report by the committee mentions: 'The men in cinema cannot imagine that it is because of the passion for art and acting that a woman comes to the movie.' For too many of them, the women they worked with were
