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Women allowed to work as make-up artists after waiting for 59 years

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STP Team
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Women allowed to work as make-up artists after waiting for 59 years

Special Report by Shubhangini Arora

 

 

No, I am not making this up. The make-up industry in India is steeped in gender bias, the kind that most people did not even know of, until this week.

 

The Supreme Court on November 4th, 2014 ordered the Cine Costume Make-up Artists and Hair Dressers Association to allow women make-up artists to work in the film industry, who up until now were forbidden from doing so. This came as a shock to many who didn't even know that a clause like this existed. Given that there are thousands of women working in this industry, these headlines have been shocking to many. But in this entire story lies a fantastic account of a woman called Charu Khurana who almost single handedly fought this case to end an 59-year old practice.

 

Khurana, 31, a make-up artist from Delhi, was at the center of this discrimination. In 2009, August, when Khurana was working on a Tamil film called ' Ennai Pol Oruvan' as a make-up artist, the union slapped a fine of Rs.25000 on her. She was fined because according to the association no female artist could be given a make-up card. According to them, this ensured that male members are not deprived of work as make-up artistes.

 

Not only did this shock her, she felt betrayed. Even though she paid the fine, Khurana decided to fight against this unjustifiable ban on female make-up artists from working in the film industry and finally won the five year-long battle.

 

The National >

 

The question however remains, why it took this long for a ruling like this to come into effect? Women have been make-up artists in India for a long time but have always been bought to the set under the guise of being hair-dressers and have been denied credits. Producers who have tried to resist have had to pay fines and so mostly refrained from interfering. In the Bollywood industry that projects itself of late as a space for independent role-oriented women, who knew such steep gender bias was underlying the very skin of its work culture? Why wasn’t any legal action taken for almost six decades by anyone? How come no actor talked of this?

 

Banu, one of the most popular Make-up artists in the Indian film industry, worked on Rajinikanth and was responsible for the creation of the robot in 'Robot,' and faced similar issues. Another woman who is extremely popular with the stars in the industry is Namita Soni. She has worked with actors like Shah Rukh Khan, Sonam Kapoor and Deepika Padukone. The fact that such influential personalities, working in one of the most vast film industries in the world, couldn’t give women artists their deserved right is a matter of shame.

 

However, this ruling by the Supreme Court of India brings some hope. According to a report by The Indian Express, Justices Dipak Misra and UU Lalit stated, “How can this discrimination continue? We will not permit this. It cannot be allowed under our Constitution. Why should only a male artist be allowed to put make-up? How can it be said that only men can be make-up artists and women can be hairdressers? We don’t see a reason to prohibit a woman from becoming a make-up artist if she is qualified.”

 

With women now working as cab drivers in cites, the country having women-only banks and the gender entering different fields every day, hopefully India will emerge as a more gender neutral nation in the coming years.

 

Women in India ban on women make-up artists Charu Khurana Women Make-up artists in India
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