Women professionals facing severe stress in Chennai filmdom

With the tenure of lockdown extension still undecided, many lady professionals who are working in the Tamil film industry in various departments are finding it difficult to meet personal and work-related requirements. Their main grouse seems to be that the welfare bodies looking after various crafts are all biased in favour of men and they are not taken seriously.

As Priyadarshini, one of the freelance workers who was associated recently with Vijay's forthcoming film ' Master' pointed out, she has not been approached by any office bearer of these Associations to find out whether she needed any assistance during these troubled times.

Similar has been the opinion from many other domain specialists who have worked with leading banners of Mani Ratnam and quite a few leading names. When queried about this state of affairs, R V Udayakumar, one-time director of hit films starring Rajinikanth and Vijayakanth pointed out the other side of the story.

According to him, there are nearly 5000 professionals of the fairer sex working in movies in Chennai but most of them are non-members and hence out of the purview of any welfare measures that are being planned, either by the industry or the state government.