South Indian film industry lags in women leadership roles, shows data

The South Indian film industry lags Bollywood and other non-South Indian language cinemas in terms of women serving as heads of departments (HoDs) in various stages of filmmaking and streaming series production, according to a recently released report.

 

The fourth edition of the report titled O Womaniya! reveals a decline in the representation of women HoDs in Telugu films, dropping from 5 per cent in 2021 to 3 per cent in 2023.  

Kannada films fared no better, with no women-led departments recorded. Tamil and Malayalam cinema maintained a static 6 per cent share each, while Bollywood reported a comparatively