Showbiz: Where are the women business leaders?

livemint.com:

NEW DELHI : In 2018, ZEE5, the video-streaming platform owned by Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, released a crime thriller called Rangbaaz. The show, set in rural India of the 1990s, chronicled the real-life story of a small-town boy who turned into a dreaded gangster. It derived much of its appeal from the macho protagonist, with guns and sleek stunts, and a plot reeking of testosterone.

Five years on, when ZEE5 was planning an antithesis to the show that would celebrate the right side of the law but give viewers the same edge-of-the-seat action, there were several pitches on the table. However, instead of greenlighting yet another action-packed show glorifying a male protagonist, Nimisha Pandey, ZEE5’s chief content officer of Hindi originals, decided to go on the road rarely taken. The new show, Jaanbaaz Hindustan Ke, centres around a female cop, who leads an investigation into a bomb attack.

“It didn’t occur to anybody that the lead protagonist could also be a woman. The fact that we decided to turn the central character into a woman was a small shift (in storytelling). It definitely wasn’t a brainwave or a stroke of genius.

But could it have come from a man? I’m not so sure," Pandey says, referring to a crucial lacuna in Indian entertainment—the dearth of women in top leadership roles across the industry. While there are several stories centred around women, shows that give women actors of different ages and demographics ample opportunity to play those roles, the industry itself doesn’t have enough women at the helm to commission these projects or bring their point of view to the table. According to a July 2022 report by media consulting firm Ormax, only 10% of the head of department (HoD) positions across key