Rape, sexual assault, harassment, women’s safety – these words have found their way to the front pages of many newspapers in the last several weeks. 

The trigger was not just the August 9 brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata. Even as the outrage and demonstrations continued in Kolkata, a path-breaking report on women working in a very different environment from that of a medical college reminded us of the challenges and dangers facing women everywhere. 

On August 19, the Justice K Hema Committee report on the Malayalam film industry, finally released after a four-year battle through courts, gives us insights into what was known in whispers but is now substantiated by hard facts and testimonies by women in the industry. It paints a dire picture of the working environment of women in this industry, where they are sexually targeted by men at every level, as actresses, as assistant directors, as make-up artists or as technicians.  The report also confirms the reasons that women do not speak up as they fear losing their jobs and see no way to get justice.

The impact of the report is still being felt, not just in Kerala but across south India. Since its release, women in the Telugu, Tamil and Kannada film industry are also demanding a similar inquiry.  

The impact of the report is unfolding even as I write this. Within a fortnight, several prominent men from the Malayalam film industry have resigned from their film association – the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists or AMMA. Other actors have issued strong denials after some of the women who spoke to the committee followed up by filing police complaints against specific men. 

Predictably, given the nature of the accusations, and the prominence of the men involved, the media’s response, by and large, has been to report everything stated by these men in the Malayalam film industry, including their vociferous denials as well as the charges against them.

If the reporting by the media remains at this level, the storm following the release of the report could well die down after a while. Fortunately, at least some media platforms have gone beyond the usual “he said she said” style of reporting and used the peg of the report to dive deeper into the sickness that afflicts the film world.

Here, we must appreciate the consistent reporting by an independent media platform which has reported on stories of sexual assault and harassment in the Malayalam industry for many years. The News Minute has followed the story from 2017, when a prominent actor, Dileep, was charged with having organised the kidnapping and rape of a well-known woman actor. Today, if you want details about the past, and the contents of the Hema Committee report as well as the ongoing fallout, you need look no further than The News Minute.

Apart from The News Minute, at least two mainstream English newspapers have given prominence to the report and its contents, written strong editorials, and done some follow-up stories – Indian Express and The Hindu. 

In its editorial of August 26, The Hindu argued that the Hema Committee report could be a catalyst that could encourage many more women to speak out. Indian Express placed the report within the context of sexual assaults against women over time, and rightly pointed out that the road ahead is “rutted with deep power asymmetries”. 

Apart from the editorial, Indian Express has carried several follow-up stories on the Malayalam film industry such as this one by Nikhila Henry on make-up artists.  Many of these women are faced with the hard choice of either speaking up and complaining about harassment or quitting. If they complain, they are singled out and denied work. Despite years of experience, women make-up artists have had to struggle to get recognition even from their union.  

Another story in Indian Express brings out the caste angle, where women from the marginalised castes face a double challenge, of their gender and their caste. 

What we cannot overlook while discussing the Hema Committee report and its impact on the film industry is that it would never have come about had it not been for the relentless campaign by a group called the Women in Cinema Collective. Comprising actors, directors, editors and others in the film industry, the WCC petitioned the Kerala state government to set up an inquiry into the working conditions of women in the industry. 

Even after the government responded and set up the committee, it took WCC more than four years through courts to finally get a redacted version of the Hema Committee report released. And as Beena Paul, the convenor of the WCC points out in this interview to Scroll, the story is not yet over. “What the report has achieved is to point out that the film industry is an unorganised, almost feudal kind of structure.”

As far as the media is concerned, this report challenges us to dig deeper into the reality of not just the film industry, but all professions where women are employed. The Kolkata rape has already led to an inquiry into the conditions under which women in medicine work – doctors, nurses and others. What about other professions, including the media?

Also, as the Hema Committee report has exposed, the problem is not restricted to the physical work conditions, and the solution does not lie in just fixing these – better toilets, surveillance cameras, transport after night shifts etc. 

The challenge is much deeper. It is the systemic misogyny that prevails in many industries which is compounded by the absence of effective redressal avenues. The Hema Committee report has broken, at least for the moment, the silence that has enveloped the treatment of women in many professions in India.