Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 16: Popular Malayalam actress Rima Kallingal, popular for her outspoken stance, fighting for gender equality in the Malayalam film industry in a talk at TedX at Thiruvananthapuram last October slashed the still existing gender discrimination and sexuality prevalent in the Malayalam film industry.

She begins her talk by proudly proclaiming she is a feminist and that her feminism began with fish! She narrated the story of her mother who used to serve fish to the men at the dining table, the day she began to question the gender inequalities and why it never occurred to her mother to sit and eat together with the rest of the family.

“How long do we dumb down, how long do we remain silent and what does it take to break this silence?” she posed to the audience.

She also points out that this is the reason ‘why around 150 actresses enter into the industry to act against just 10 male actors’.

She also brought in the topic of the sexual assault of popular actress in February 2017. Rima applauded the courage the actress showed in standing up for herself, pressing charged against the assaulters in spite of the consequences.

Rima also added that ‘popular actress broke every convention and stereotype connected to a woman in her situation which helped me to break my silence’.

She broke out on the pay gap existing in Mollywood which is one-third of the male counterpart, though it is 2017 and she added that the “the male-female ratio in any given set is 1:30.”

She also added that though Vishaka guidelines for workplace sexual harassment laid out by the Supreme Court has been laid out as a law, it is never practised though the entertainers pay pay 40% entertainment tax to the government.