Bollywood actress Celina Jaitley who is best known for films like ‘No Entry’, ‘Tom Dick and Harry, ‘Apna Sapna Money Money Money’, is garnering praise for her 2020 short film, ‘Season’s Greetings’. The mommy of three, who is based in Austria, actively advocates for women’s rights and supports various other social causes including the LGBTQ community.
Sharing her views on nepotism and the insider-outsider debate in Bollywood, Jaitley told Times of India, that a successful transition from one generation to the other is not bad, since it is present in every industry and business. However, she did point out that star kids are immune to sexual harassment that prevails in showbiz.
She said, “One of the main things that I would like to point towards is that the children from film lineage have natural immunity from the sexual harassment that exists in Bollywood, other than that everyone has to work hard, some have to work harder than others.”
In March 2019, Celina stressed on the importance of having an intimacy supervisor in sets. “Sexual harassment is a gender-neutral offence, at least in theory, hence neutral communication and vigilance, strict monitoring of the workplace is the most important duty of an intimacy superviser.”
“People in power are more likely to wrongly perceive that subordinates are sexually interested in them or available to harass,” she added. Celina’s advice to improve the work environment is to champion a zero-tolerance policy on acts of discrimination and harassment in the workplace.
“Cine guilds should enlist professionals to train staff at all levels about the risk of harassment and warn them about the consequences should standards not be adhered to. Since the beginning of male-female coexistence, sexual harassment has been a complicated and deep-rooted issue…an anti-sexual harassment policy alone will not be able to stop it from occurring nor will it bring transformation in the sexist attitudes.
“However, it will lay the foundation for regular awareness generation, accountable and transparent tackling processes.” Celina feels preventive measures on the sets could have averted the Tanushree Dutta incident.
“In the event of what happened with Tanushree, had there been an intimacy supervisor appointed by a body of power above and outside the production, the outcome of what truly occurred would have been completely different.”
Source: Free Press Journal
