Equal pay for unequal work?

Equal pay for unequal work?

from the editor's desk...

Sarita A Tanwar

Gender pay discrimination is a problem that working women all around the world have been fighting against for years. It came into spotlight during the last Academy Awards when actress Patricia Arquette spoke about the disparity in the pay differences between male and female actors. A year later, pay disparity for actresses has become a hot-button issue in the entertainment business. Many Indian actresses have also spoken on the subject. Wage equality makes sense in almost every field of work " from banking to sales and marketing to modeling. I know feminists would want to kill me for saying this but I am not sure, equal pay can be applied to acting. Not in our film industry at least.

Equal pay for equal work makes sense. Individuals doing the same work should receive the same remuneration. But our films are all led by male actors. Heroines have little to do in most of the films. And the success output towards a film contributed by the male actor is far greater and I'm not saying that; the records do. So, if the work and output is not equal then the fee shouldn't be either. So while I am all for equal pay for female writers, directors, choreographers, editors and women in other departments behind the camera, I am not quite on the side of actresses demanding same wages as their male counterparts.

Indian films rely heavily on a male actor's stardom. So irrespective of whether a Salman Khan or a Rajinikant film is good or bad, their fans will rush to the theaters to see them. This is evident by their first day collections. The opening day figures of a Varun Dhawan or a Ranveer Singh starrer is close to'8-10 crores. A heroine-oriented film like Piku featuring top actress Deepika Padukone collected'5.45 crores on the first day. Anushka Sharma's NH10 opened at '2.9 crore and Sonam Kapoor's Neerja made '4.63 crores. So if Ranveer Singh charges between '6-13 crore as remuneration vis--vis Deepika's '8 crores for a film, I would say that's fair.

There's a $28 million discrepancy between the highest-paid actress and the highest-paid actor in Hollywood, even though they make tons offilms with female stars as protagonists. In Bollywood, the difference in the fees of Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone is almost 50 per cent. And it's almost a whopping 95 per cent if we are talking of one of three Khans and any B-Town leading lady. The Khans not only get their fees but their contracts sometimes allows them to keep the IPR, one territory as their remuneration and back-end pay, which means that once the producer or studio recovers the cost, they get a percentage of profit share that is anything between 30 to 50 per cent. But then, a Khan starrer also gets an opening of '30-40 crores. The producers are paying them fabulous sums, because they are confident of recovering the money and making a profit. If actresses work towards ensuring that their films make as much revenues as that of a male actor, they would surely get the pay hike they are demanding " and that too, without asking. It's not that it hasn't happened before. In the mid and late 80s, Sridevi was demanding and getting a remuneration that matched any top hero of the time (with the only exception of Amitabh Bachchan). I think actresses should work toward doing films that adds a little something to their resume. Like Kangana Ranaut in Tanu Weds Manu and Queen. With that, will come better pay cheques.

Paul Feig said in an interview last year, "Women will start to receive equal paychecks if there's a supply of better roles for them." Before the pay cheques can change, the scenario has to change. If actresses are being treated like second class citizens when it comes to pay, it is because they are allowing themselves to be portrayed like that on screen. That needs to change first. More power to Anushka Sharma who opened up the market by producing the kind of films she wants to act in " NH10. She not only made money on the film but she also got respect and that in the long run means a lot more. If more actresses did that, things would change sooner.

sarita.tanwar@dnaindia.net