At the 8th edition of Times Network’s flagship annual event-India Economic Conclave (IEC) 2022, the theme of the talk was ‘Women Empowerment at The Workplace’, where eminent Film Producer and Director Ekta Kapoor, the MD, Balaji Telefilms Limited and Dr Sangita Reddy, MD of Apollo Hospitals, spoke about the ‘male gaze’ in Indian cinema and the labels that women are subjected to at the workplace.
Director and film producer Ekta, who serves as a pivot to Indian Cinema, speaks about ‘Gender Intelligence’ and how content creators can do their bit in sensitising the mass about this. Kapoor moved on to elucidate the need for equal representation of women alongside the need and power to speak up. She further talks about how entertaining stories, rather than elitist, could work well towards spreading gender intelligence among the common people.
Ekta’s 2011 hit ‘Dirty Picture’ is a perfect example of how an entertaining story can shed light on gender intelligence and make it through the clutter in the end. “So when we did Dirty picture, I took a story, I made it entertaining, I got the masses in. There was a lot of sexuality, but there was also a woman owning it. She didn’t have an issue, because she stood out there and said, ‘this is me, I am sexy and sex dekhte aap sab hai aur dirty main?’ (all of you watch sex, but I am the dirty one?)”, says Kapoor.
Focusing on the masses being sensitised towards the issue in an ‘entertaining way’, Ekta believes in some way they ‘changed a little bit of the mindset.’
