According to the second edition of "O Womaniya!," a study on the representation of women in Indian films and the M&E industry, women held a pitiful 10% share in senior leadership positions in media and entertainment corporate houses as well as across head of department (HOD) roles in Indian films in 2021.
Amazon Prime Video provided help for the study conducted by the media consulting firm Ormax Media and the online video service Film Companion.
The report looked at how women were portrayed and represented in three key areas: content (which covered both on-screen and behind-the-scenes female representation), marketing (which looked at female representation in movie and television trailers), and corporate (which looked at female representation in boardrooms of the top 25 media and entertainment companies).
Five roles total—direction, writing, cinematography, editing, and production design—were examined for the report as HOD positions in the film industry.
In all, 100 movies and 50 TV shows from eight Indian languages—Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Bengali, and Gujarati—were released in 2021.
According to the survey, not a single woman directed or edited any of the 56 theatrical movies that were analysed across languages. Only 10% of senior leadership positions were held by women, even in media and entertainment corporations that are at the centre of decision-making, which had a ripple impact on inclusivity throughout the production and execution chain.
“While it’s no surprise that female representation in mainstream entertainment is low, the degree of skew, such as 10:90 on some key parameters, should be a wake-up call,” said Shailesh Kapoor, founder & CEO, Ormax Media. “While streaming titles, especially series, are more women-inclusive in on and off-screen representation, theatrical films continue to perform very poorly, and in fact, have shown no positive growth at all since the previous report, which covered content released in 2019 && 2020. We hope that this report serves as a starting point for the industry to come together and discuss ways to address the evident imbalance.”
Data are crucial for comprehending how radically skewed the gender equation in the Indian film business is, according to Anupama Chopra, a reviewer for films and the creator of Film Companion. “O Womaniya! provides us with the starting point for discussion and debate. Starting out as an effort by Ormax Media and Film Companion, the initiative has now found resonance with the entire industry. The support that we have received from film bodies, streaming services and studios is heartening. We will continue to build this momentum and hopefully lead the way to change,” she said.
The most fundamental "Bechdel Test," an internationally recognised indicator of female representation in film, was not passed by more over half of the theatrical releases.
A movie must contain at least one moment in it where two named female characters are speaking about something other than a man or men in order for it to pass the Bechdel Test.
Men speak more than women by a rate of 3:1, even in trailers. Women chatted for no more than 10 seconds in as many as 48 trailers on different estates.
“While there have been improvements in female representation in Indian entertainment, there hasn’t been any data-backed report in India that can hold a mirror up to the current reality. O Womaniya! 2022 fills the much-needed gap with its rich insights,” said Aparna Purohit, Head of India Originals, Prime Video. “The report serves as a good starting point to initiate discussions on the need to involve more women, particularly in decision-making roles, as that has a ripple effect on inclusivity in the entire ecosystem.”
Purohit noted that streaming services have undoubtedly created a more inclusive storytelling environment, giving women more possibilities and giving them a voice, which has led to an increase in stories with female protagonists.
Interestingly, when a woman approved a TV show or a movie, the proportion of female HODs doubled. In a similar vein, if a woman was responsible for commissioning the title, a higher percentage of films (68 percent) passed the Bechdel Test, and women had a higher percentage of trailer speak time (35 percent).
