International Women’s Day: Paoli Dam’s 5 inspiring quotes celebrating feminity and empowerment

Paoli Dam, just like her headstrong onscreen characters, has shattered the glass ceiling, hit back at patriarchy and has often made a case for equality and women empowerment. On International Women’s Day we take a look at 5 such quotes by the versatile actor which will surely make you proud and inspire you to speak for the change.

The films being made now, especially me doing women-oriented films with extremely strong characters and women of substance is definitely something to cheer for. Today female actors are taking up important roles where the content is not male dominated. The technicalities of the portrayal of female characters have changed a lot. I think slowly the regressive mind-set is vanishing from our cinema.

When watching cinema people enjoy a lot, but the fact is in real life they can’t easily accept. Women are still being asked to be submissive, docile and polite. I am not saying all of these are wrong, but you can’t play with a woman’s patience for too long. I think to change this scenario women themselves have to speak up for their own rights.

There are things which get deep-rooted in our minds as we grow up. For instance the attributes of do’s and don’ts in our society, especially for a boy and a girl. But now certain films are being made that challenge and question the so-called society rules. The time has come for every woman to say ‘NO’ to a lot of things.

Gender biasness is there both in Bollywood and regional industries. If you see closely male actors are getting paid more. The script and narrative are often being created in a way to give the male actors an upper hand compared to their female counterparts. Over the years, in Indian cinema people have expected female actors to remain glamorous, eye candy types. But thankfully, we are gradually coming out of this mentality and through our body of works we have been able to say that we deserve better.

It completely depends on who the director is, if the scene has any importance in the narrative and whether it is convincing enough for me but like I have always stated that anything for cinema!