Mind the gap: Bollywood embraces pay parity as women actors turn ‘hero’

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Indian Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan takes part in a promotional event in Bangalore on December 20, 2017. (AFP)
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In this June 25, 2016 file photo, Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone poses for photographers at the International Indian Film Academy Rocks Green Carpet for the 17th Edition of IIFA Weekend & Awards in Madrid, Spain. (AP)
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Updated 18 July 2020
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Mind the gap: Bollywood embraces pay parity as women actors turn ‘hero’

  • Industry experts credit change to rise of female stars in lead roles

PATNA/INDIA: Bollywood starlet Urvashi Rautela caused a stir this week when reports surfaced suggesting she had been paid $931,000 for her new film, “Virgin Bhanupriya” —  a staggering fee for a woman actor in the Indian film industry.

The reports turned out to be a publicity stunt planted by Rautela’s marketing team, with the actor refusing to divulge more details on the “very personal” topic.

“I don’t think it’s right for me to discuss my remuneration. It is something very personal,” Rautela told Arab News on Saturday.

With men continuing to call the shots in Bollywood, the marketing gimmick triggered conversations on social media and in an industry where women actors drawing a fatter pay cheque was unheard of until recently.

India has been slow in dealing with its pay inequity problem. Research by diversity and inclusion consulting firm Avtar Group found that women are paid 34 percent less than men for the same amount of work and despite having the same qualifications.

The study is corroborated by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020, which places India 112th in its list of 153 countries dealing with the problem.

However, while the gender gap has grown wider in several sectors over the years, it seems to be closing, albeit slowly, in the Indian film industry.

A recent example is that of Bollywood’s reigning superstar, Deepika Padukone, who asked to be paid more than her co-star, Ranveer Singh — an equally established actor and Padukone’s husband — when the two worked together in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2018 film “Padmaavat.”

Bhansali said he agreed because the film was named after Padukone’s character and she was “the hero of the film.”

The same logic was applied by filmmaker Anubhav Sinha, who, in his latest film “Thappad,” paid actress Taapsee Pannu more than her usual remuneration “because she was the film’s hero.”

“A lot of actresses are being paid much better than a lot of actors. The disparity cannot be attributed to the business alone, it is also the audience that is highly selective in what they will support, and to what extent,” he told Arab News.

Pannu agrees, but is quick to add that absolute pay parity was still a distant dream for many.

“Unfortunately, a female-driven film doesn’t attract the kind of footfall a male-driven film does. So the difference in box-office collections is large and hence the difference in payments. I know when my films collect as much as a male-driven film, they will pay me the same as the male actors. The difference lies in the hands of the audience now. It’s the audience who can help us bridge the gap. We can’t do it alone,” she said.

Formidable actress and National Film Award winner Shabana Azmi said she believes it is “all about the numbers that an actor brings in.”

“At the cost of sounding renegade, I think that is the main consideration. When a female star brings in audiences, she will be paid equally. As more and more women-centric films become commercial successes, it will happen. However, raising awareness on the issue in protest is a good way to start, so producers start paying heed to this demand,” the 69-year-old actor said.

While Padukone and Pannu are leading the changet, they are not the first women actors to do so.

Decades ago, Hema Malini commanded the kind of box-office clout that her male co-stars envied and other actresses dreamt of.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Malini delivered a string of hits, including “Seeta Aur Geeta,” “Sholay,” “Pratiggya” and “Premnagar.”

Looking back on those days when she was the undisputed hero of the box office, Malini said: “I never saw myself as the queen of the box office or whatever names the media and the audience gave me. Neither was I counting the hits nor the money. It was just work for me.”

However, Malini agrees that she did command “box-office clout” and sees the same qualities in Padukone.

“I am happy to see Deepika Padukone getting the same kind of respect. Women must be paid on a par with men, and not just in films,” Malini who is also a parliamentarian, told Arab News.

Other actors said pay parity should be determined by “commercial viability and not gender.”

“I think the logic of unequal pay is that pay is commanded as per star power. Actors, male or female, should be paid according to the number of days they have worked. Equal pay for equal days of work. It’s simple economics,” Swara Bhaskar of “Veere Di Wedding” fame, told Arab News.


Sameer Nair, CEO of Applause Entertainment, a leading film production house, said with the popularity of Over the Top and subscriber-paid platforms, the opportunity for equal pay was being “seriously addressed.”

“It is a social issue, prevalent everywhere, and not just entertainment. Change, while slow, is very real and is happening. In many ways, the Indian entertainment content, which is female-skewed, does pay equal or more to the female lead actors,” he said.


A 98-year-old in Ukraine walked miles to safety from Russians, with slippers and a cane

Updated 01 May 2024
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A 98-year-old in Ukraine walked miles to safety from Russians, with slippers and a cane

  • Describing her journey, the nonagenarian said she had fallen twice and was forced to stop to rest at some points, even sleeping along the way before waking up and continuing her journey

KYIV, Ukraine: A 98-year-old woman in Ukraine who escaped Russian-occupied territory by walking almost 10 kilometers (6 miles) alone, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane has been reunited with her family days after they were separated while fleeing to safety.
Lidia Stepanivna Lomikovska and her family decided to leave the frontline town of Ocheretyne, in the eastern Donetsk region, last week after Russian troops entered it and fighting intensified.
Russians have been advancing in the area, pounding Kyiv’s depleted, ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones and bombs.
“I woke up surrounded by shooting all around — so scary,” Lomikovska said in a video interview posted by the National Police of Donetsk region.
In the chaos of the departure, Lomikovska became separated from her son and two daughters-in-law, including one, Olha Lomikovska, injured by shrapnel days earlier. The younger family members took to back routes, but Lydia wanted to stay on the main road.
With a cane in one hand and steadying herself using a splintered piece of wood in the other, the pensioner walked all day without food and water to reach Ukrainian lines.
Describing her journey, the nonagenarian said she had fallen twice and was forced to stop to rest at some points, even sleeping along the way before waking up and continuing her journey.
“Once I lost balance and fell into weeds. I fell asleep … a little, and continued walking. And then, for the second time, again, I fell. But then I got up and thought to myself: “I need to keep walking, bit by bit,’” Lomikovska said.
Pavlo Diachenko, acting spokesman for the National Police of Ukraine in the Donetsk region, said Lomikovska was saved when Ukrainian soldiers spotted her walking along the road in the evening. They handed her over to the “White Angels,” a police group that evacuates citizens living on the front line, who then took her to a shelter for evacuees and contacted her relatives.
“I survived that war,’ she said referring to World War II. “I had to go through this war too, and in the end, I am left with nothing.
“That war wasn’t like this one. I saw that war. Not a single house burned down. But now – everything is on fire,” she said to her rescuer.
In the latest twist to the story, the chief executive of one of Ukraine’s largest banks announced on his Telegram channel Tuesday that the bank would purchase a house for the pensioner.
“Monobank will buy Lydia Stepanivna a house and she will surely live in it until the moment when this abomination disappears from our land,” Oleh Horokhovskyi said.
 

 


Amazon Purr-rime: Cat accidentally shipped to online retailer

Updated 30 April 2024
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Amazon Purr-rime: Cat accidentally shipped to online retailer

  • Galena was found safe by a warehouse worker at an Amazon center after vanishing from her home in Utah

LOS ANGELES: A curious cat that sneaked into an open box was shipped across the United States to an Amazon warehouse after its unknowing owners sealed it inside.
Carrie Clark’s pet, Galena, vanished from her Utah home on April 10, sparking a furious search that involved plastering “missing” posters around the neighborhood.
But a week later, a vet hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in Los Angeles got in touch to say the cat had been discovered in a box — alongside several pairs of boots — by a warehouse worker at an Amazon center.
“I ran to tell my husband that Galena was found and we broke down upon realizing that she must have jumped into an oversized box that we shipped out the previous Wednesday,” Clark told KSL TV in Salt Lake City.
“The box was a ‘try before you buy,’ and filled with steel-toed work boots.”
Clark and her husband jetted to Los Angeles, where they discovered Amazon employee Brandy Hunter had rescued Galena — a little hungry and thirsty after six days in a cardboard box, but otherwise unharmed.
“I could tell she belonged to someone by the way she was behaving,” said Hunter, according to Amazon.
“I took her home that night and went to the vet the next day to have her checked for a microchip, and the rest is history.”


What did people eat before agriculture? New study offers insight

A human tooth discovered at Taforalt Cave in Morocco in an undated photograph. (REUTERS)
Updated 30 April 2024
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What did people eat before agriculture? New study offers insight

  • Analysis of forms — or isotopes — of elements including carbon, nitrogen, zinc, sulfur and strontium in these remains indicated the type and amount of plants and meat they ate

WASHINGTON: The advent of agriculture roughly 11,500 years ago in the Middle East was a milestone for humankind — a revolution in diet and lifestyle that moved beyond the way hunter-gatherers had existed since Homo sapiens arose more than 300,000 years ago in Africa.
While the scarcity of well-preserved human remains from the period preceding this turning point has made the diet of pre-agricultural people a bit of a mystery, new research is now providing insight into this question. Scientists reconstructed the dietary practices of one such culture from North Africa, surprisingly documenting a heavily plant-based diet.
The researchers examined chemical signatures in bones and teeth from the remains of seven people, as well as various isolated teeth, from about 15,000 years ago found in a cave outside the village of Taforalt in northeastern Morocco. The people were part of what is called the Iberomaurusian culture.
Analysis of forms — or isotopes — of elements including carbon, nitrogen, zinc, sulfur and strontium in these remains indicated the type and amount of plants and meat they ate. Found at the site were remains from different edible wild plants including sweet acorns, pine nuts, pistachio, oats and legumes called pulses. The main prey, based on bones discovered at the cave, was a species called Barbary sheep.
“The prevailing notion has been that hunter-gatherers’ diets were primarily composed of animal proteins. However, the evidence from Taforalt demonstrates that plants constituted a big part of the hunter-gatherers’ menu,” said Zineb Moubtahij, a doctoral student in archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and lead author of the study published on Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
“It is important as it suggests that possibly several populations in the world already started to include substantial amount of plants in their diet” in the period before agriculture was developed, added archeogeochemist and study co-author Klervia Jaouen of the French research agency CNRS.
The Iberomaurusians were hunter-gatherers who inhabited parts of Morocco and Libya from around 25,000 to 11,000 years ago. Evidence indicates the cave served as a living space and burial site.
These people used the cave for significant portions of each year, suggesting a lifestyle more sedentary than simply roaming the landscape searching for resources, the researchers said. They exploited wild plants that ripened at different seasons of the year, while their dental cavities illustrated a reliance on starchy botanical species.
Edible plants may have been stored by the hunter-gatherers year-round to guard against seasonal shortages of prey and ensure a regular food supply, the researchers said.
These people ate only wild plants, the researchers found. The Iberomaurusians never developed agriculture, which came relatively late to North Africa.
“Interestingly, our findings showed minimal evidence of seafood or freshwater food consumption among these ancient groups. Additionally, it seems that these humans may have introduced wild plants into the diets of their infants at an earlier stage than previously believed,” Moubtahij said.
“Specifically, we focused on the transition from breastfeeding to solid foods in infants. Breast milk has a unique isotopic signature, distinct from the isotopic composition of solid foods typically consumed by adults.”
Two infants were among the seven people whose remains were studied. By comparing the chemical composition of an infant’s tooth, formed during the breastfeeding period, with the composition of bone tissue, which reflects the diet shortly before death, the researchers discerned changes in the baby’s diet over time. The evidence indicated the introduction of solid foods at around the age of 12 months, with babies weaned earlier than expected for a pre-agricultural society.
North Africa is a key region for studying Homo sapiens evolution and dispersal out of Africa.
“Understanding why some hunter-gatherer groups transitioned to agriculture while others did not can provide valuable insights into the drivers of agricultural innovation and the factors that influenced human societies’ decisions to adopt new subsistence strategies,” Moubtahij said.

 


Palestinian prisoner in Israel wins top fiction prize

Basim Khandaqji’s book was chosen from 133 works submitted to the competition. (Photo/Social media)
Updated 29 April 2024
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Palestinian prisoner in Israel wins top fiction prize

  • The mask in the novel’s title refers to the blue identity card that Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds in the pocket of an old coat belonging to an Israeli

ABU DHABI: Palestinian writer Basim Khandaqji, jailed 20 years ago in Israel, won a prestigious prize for Arabic fiction on Sunday for his novel “A Mask, the Color of the Sky.”
The award of the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction was announced at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi.
The prize was accepted on Khandaqji’s behalf by Rana Idriss, owner of Dar Al-Adab, the book’s Lebanon-based publisher.
Khandaqji was born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Nablus in 1983, and wrote short stories until his arrest in 2004 at the age of 21.
He was convicted and jailed on charges relating to a deadly bombing in Tel Aviv, and completed his university education from inside jail via the Internet.
The mask in the novel’s title refers to the blue identity card that Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds in the pocket of an old coat belonging to an Israeli.
Khandaqji’s book was chosen from 133 works submitted to the competition.
Nabil Suleiman, who chaired the jury, said the novel “dissects a complex, bitter reality of family fragmentation, displacement, genocide, and racism.”
Since being jailed Khandaqji has written poetry collections including “Rituals of the First Time” and “The Breath of a Nocturnal Poem.”
He has also written three earlier novels.
 

 


Mexican doctor claims victory in $28 Cartier earrings battle

Updated 28 April 2024
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Mexican doctor claims victory in $28 Cartier earrings battle

MEXICO CITY: A Mexican man has claimed a victory over French luxury brand Cartier, saying an error allowed him to buy two pairs of earrings for $28 that were supposed to cost nearly $28,000.
After a four-month struggle, doctor Rogelio Villarreal said he had finally received the jewelry, which he accused the company of refusing to deliver after his online purchase in December.
According to Villarreal, he came across the low-priced earrings while browsing Instagram.
“I swear I broke out in a cold sweat,” he wrote on the social media platform X.
Cartier declined to recognize the purchase and offered Villarreal a refund, as well as a bottle of champagne and a passport holder as compensation, according to a company letter shared by the doctor.
But Villarreal refused and decided to take the case to Mexico’s consumer protection agency, which ruled in favor of the doctor.
Cartier accepted the decision, Villarreal announced.
“War is over. Cartier is complying,” he wrote.